Friendships, Hardships And Everything In-Between
by Eldritch Shadow Feanaro
Summary: Jack Southwark was a normal young man. His greatest trait was probably his love for his family, and the only parent he had left was his mother. One day, while walking home, tragedy struck and stranded him somewhere foreign, yet ultimately similar. Follow him. Experience his hardships, and the bonds he makes along the way. World Order: Megaman ZX - Pokemon - RWBY - Skyrim - Worm
1. Chapter 1

The cool breeze of winter sent chills down my spine as I walked in a rush down the empty streets, then turned to a darkened alleyway on my immediate right in a damp coat.

I didn't intend to be as late coming home today as I always was, I didn't want mother to worry.

Tightening the cheap, red scarf covering my face a little, I then pushed it up to cover more of my face as the chilling winds nipped and bit at my skin through the small little segments of it left bare between the sleeves of my coat and the hood's opening for my head, leaving my cheeks burning and red. My coat did little to stop the cold- I'd have actually preferred removing it if I could since it was only making the effects of the weather on me _worse_ because of how soaking wet it had gotten from the slight shower that had happened minutes prior.

'I hate winter, no let me rephrase that; I fucking _HATE_ winter' came my thoughts, mused to myself without any physical voice.

My shivering form stomped through the currently frigid alleyways that led to my home.

'I'm not even bothered about the cold, it's just that it always _fucking rains_ in the cold when I'm out here' came another round of pointless thoughts from my own mind.

Inside the confines of my head, there was no one to deny my claims- no one to brighten the lights of faint anger filling my mental haven.

My 'point' would remain uncontested- but at least I'd soon be free of the cold.

As well as my old life and family, even if I didn't know it yet.

Another few steps in shoes soaked through, squelching with each heavy and almost sluggish step, had me walking out of the alley and into the abandoned street on the other side.

Not bothering to look up or down the road because of how silent the afternoon was, almost eerily so. I crossed the empty, soundless street without any problems.

There was an air to everything that my spite at the weather's 'sins' against me had blinded me to- an almost dangerous aura in the street that was empty of people and cars- there wasn't even the distant sounds of machinery chugging along the tarmac, just silence and the crashing of waves a bit far off.

I paid that emptiness no heed, my attitude removing my suspicion in a situation that I otherwise would have likely detected almost immediately.

"I wish I could just be home right now." I mumbled into the slightly damp scarf wrapped lightly around my mouth and nose- only adding to it's dampness with every heavy breath.

I would have had no way of knowing how cruel the world was until _it_ happened.

As I continued my slow walk through town, towards home, I grumbled halfheartedly, my breathing picking up in the unforgiving, chilling winter winds.

My scarf grew damper, and all I could do was sigh with frustration.

I was only a few minutes from home, something I was _very_ grateful for.

The light 'pitter patter' of rain filled my ears as droplets from the heavens began pounding against my back like the bodies of a hundred fireflies against the glassy exterior of a lamp.

My eye, in response to this, twitched, and my anger got the better of me.

As it always does when it _really_ shouldn't.

"For fucks sake!" came my voice, sharp and growled out at the apathetic streets around me as my coat, which had started to warm up a little, began to grow even more damp against my skin, clinging to it like a limpet.

Heat lost, I shook, though from anger or the cold I'm still not sure.

'Hello fall, when you next see winter, could you punch the little shit in the face for me?' snarked my thoughts, sarcastic and spiteful.

More angry thoughts that amounted to nothing, stupid, _stupid_ thoughts that no one apart from me could hear.

A white flash filled my vision, followed swiftly by the loud 'crack' of thunder. My world became a blur of many whites, reds and blues from the visual overload- screaming angrily all the way.

I tripped over into what I could only assume was a puddle, my eyes were burned with the image of a white lance from the sky- which I was quick to realise was _fucking lightning_.

The first time I'd seen lightning so close to anyone, and it was close enough to leave me feeling tingles of electricity everywhere, across my back, arms and legs- almost a burning sensation.

I doubt, now that I know what was in store for me, that this was something you'd normally feel from a strike of thunder if it had hit you from that close without touching you. I also doubt that it was a natural occurrence, it makes too much sense for it to be as a result of the coming 'jumps'

"That's just fucking beautiful" I murmured to myself as my vision continued to dance, blue one moment, red and sort-of-white the next.

I blinked rapidly as I tried to stand back up, only to fall back onto the floor and splash _good old H2o_ everywhere.

'I hate my life'

It wasn't true- I loved the family I still had, my life wasn't that bad.

It was about to get worse, though. Bad enough to the point that these words might actually become valid, _would be valid_ , in some cases.

When I managed to arise and get going, I was struck by a slight sensation of tiredness as I walked, I could only do my best to ignore it.

It promptly got worse.

It started as a slow droning sound in my head- one that was easy to ignore since I'd heard the occasional ringing in my ears and assumed it was just that, but it quickly spiralled out of control until I was grasping my head in my hands as a chronic headache hit me. I fell to my knees soundlessly as the pain dulled my senses- it was unforgiving in its relentlessness as it smashed into my head, my mind felt like it was being hit by a psychic war hammer wielded by Godzilla or the Hulk.

I could only groan as my mind started to go blank from the pain, and my body numb from the same as I sunk to the floor in a heap.

Not long after, I was claimed by the blissful grip of unconscious.

In my state, I was unable to watch as a soft, lime green glow pulsed around me, lifting itself and me into the air for a few moments- before it vanished with a quiet "pop".

Along with me, leaving the street I had been walking barren in it's entirety.

[]

[ ]

[ ] Section Break

[ ]

[]

My vision was filled with a few blurs of various light greens and equally light blue- my body was awoken by a loud, pained roar of rage, in my panic from the rapid reawakening, I managed to kick myself onto my feet for a moment but quickly slipped off of whatever I had been dropped on- in the end I ended up hitting the floor, a 'yelp' being pulled from me as I hit the earth.

As a small measure of silence cropped up around me, I found myself massaging my back and looking around, adrenaline flowing and quickly fading-

Everything was familiar, but so alien. A forest but off in a way I wouldn't have been able to describe in that very moment.

My only response was simple, simple said, and managed to convey all of my feelings in three, simple words.

"What the fuck...?"

I was confused and more than a little scared as I looked around me.

Everything was green and blue- some trees and the sky peeking out from above- but everything was different to how it _should_ have been.

Denial. I think that's what I felt- at this point I should have known something was up and wrong, that I wasn't 'in Kansas anymore'.

I got to my feet, and approached one of the trees, cautious and more than a little scared.

"What is this?" came a question no one would answer.

I felt the bark of the (partially) metal covered tree, not believing what I was seeing. Observing the machinery that covered it's surface.

Touching it allowed me to feel the metal blended with the bark- to know that it gave off a sort of feel that made the machine and tree fade into each other like the colors on a color wheel. Long metallic pipes - or, at least I think they where? - spiralled around the tree's trunk and almost seemed to support it like an exoskeleton, even if it clearly didn't need it.

A small patch of wires lay in the mess of metal and wire, in a strange formation that stood out proudly on the tree's surface, pulsing with an electronic red every so often.

Familiar, but I denied knowing what it was. I _knew_ what was up with this shit, but didn't believe.

I refused to, even going as far as to ignore the slight rumble of the ground beneath my feet- the oncoming sounds of _something_ hitting the forest floor, approaching, _and fast_.

Instead of acknowledging what would have obviously been a threat to someone of sound mind, I looked around at my surroundings, ignoring the sound of burrowing.

Further observation of the flora around me lead to a single conclusion- all the trees were covered in metal and pipes.

"What the fuck is this?!" I yelled- I could feel any sense of calm I had slipping away, i took a deep breath and tried to calm my rapidly beating heart with little success.

The tree continued to pulse, apathetic to my troubles, damn bastard plant.

I nearly had myself calm, then that was thrown out the window when the ground started shaking like an earthquake.

"Shit, shit, sh _it shitshitshi_ -" I called- but the trees burst as something barrelled past, a large blur of a purple and yellow. It was a worm-like thing crashing through the tree line, slithering across the ground and shaking the earth as it moved. I caught a bit of blue as it passed me by, literally meters away from me as it left a massive groove through the green earth and went on past with speed I'd not expect something so titanic to have.

I fell on my ass in shock, just sitting there, unable to comprehend what I had just seen, unable to acknowledge the trails in the dirt that had made it displaced, made the greens become browns of earth and dirt, upturned as if by a scythe that was making way for the ground to be given seeds by some large hand from above.

After a while of just sitting and gawking at nothing like an idiot, I managed to gather enough mental sensibility, slowly stood up and did what must have been the stupidest idea ever.

I decided to follow the... snakes? yeah, that fits, snakes trail.

 _I knew what it was, but denied I did. Purple and yellow snake in a forest of cyborg trees was the obvious cue, but I continued to pretend ignorance instead of taking it in- not wanting to believe._

After a while of stepping through the thing's trail, I started to listen to my surroundings, there were birds calling in the distance in a way that seemed really familiar to me, but I just couldn't place it no matter how hard I tried to remember.

 _Of course, I did. I just refused to believe that this was happening, it couldn't be after all. This wasn't possible._

After even more walking I came upon a rather interesting sight.

There were some grass-covered platforms with metal almost haphazardly dug into them, hanging from a wall. Two things seemed out-of-place in it, the first was that there were purple shards of some presumably metallic substance scattered all over, I even saw what looked like a welding mask or two around there, though I wasn't sure what they belonged to.

The second... was the metal _thing_ that just leaded into a corridor. It might have been a wall, but it now looked like it had been burned through and abused with by a baseball bat _with lasers added on to it_.

Above the door was a small ceiling of dirt and metal, one so ridiculously tall that I couldn't even see the top... or I just didn't have a good point of view, but that's besides the point, it was just floating there without any support. If it was just packed dirt I could believe it.

That idea was scrapped when I was able to throw a stone at the ceiling- it being too high up for me to do anything with otherwise, and it left a visible mark.

After that, I heard something in the distance- it sounding like an explosion, but accompanied by what I believe might have been a yell.

I was too far away to get anything much out of what I heard, but it was enough to grab my curiosity and pull me towards it.

Today was _full_ of 'great ideas', it seemed.

When I looked around, it all seemed so familiar, yet I couldn't place it. I could swear I had never seen a place like this but... it all gave me a weird sense of deja vu.

When I was already most of the way to the busted open wall, I knew I couldn't stop where I was. _I had to know_. I had to know what I'd heard, I had to know if I was going crazy.

I hoped I was if I'm honest. I _still_ hope now- that this is all just a coma dream.

I managed to get myself through the busted open wall- and it was at that point I realised something.

My coat and scarf were missing. This wasn't exactly the weirdest thing that had happened to me today, but it was still worth noting.

After a few steps I found more metallic shards everywhere and some small helicopter blade-like thing that was broken in half and melted at points- looking almost like it had been dipped in molten metal that had been scraped off before it had fully cooled.

"This, is strange" I spoke quietly, scared that if I said _anything_ in even a _slightly_ louder voice, something would come and strike me down for breaking the otherwise atmospheric noises of the forest- the tweeting of birds in the distance, the rustle of branches...

After a while, I got moving again, and was met with a curious, square-shaped hill. I scaled it with a small amount of challenge, but it took maybe a bit over a quarter of a minute to scale.

I walked a few steps forward, only to see that the small hill stopped here, dropping down a little over my own height.

"Well that was a waste of my time" I sighed quietly, sitting on the edge of the drop before letting myself carefully down, bracing my short fall with nothing but my legs.

I found myself face to face with one of the welder masks when I took a short observation of my surroundings. The thing was hiding in some grass with scattered bits of purple around it.

I was unnerved when I looked at it for some reason, one I couldn't describe. The best comparison I can give is it was like looking at a human skull, but somewhat less creepy.

That line of thought brought a slight smile to my face. An idea formed, one that would hopefully relieve my somewhat stressed self.

I picked up the mask in my right hand, raising it on an outstretched limb and looking it directly in the visor, pretending it was a human skull.

After a moment of likely looking incredibly stupid, I asked the welding mask; "To be, or not to be?"

It said nothing, _fucking_ bastard.

Feeling thankfully a bit less stressed, I threw the greyish-white mask over my shoulder, continuing my walk further into the woods. Further towards what had caused the explosion sound.

It was after I moved around a large tree stump that I came face to face with something that I had silently been expecting, but had been denying and hoping I wouldn't see for the entire time I'd been here, but did anyway.

There, scattered amongst the forest clearing, lay the snake that had passed me earlier. It looked like the love child of Optimus Prime and some a Steelix- a multi-sectioned beast colored purple and yellow with a few blue and grey objects around it.

The metallic, titanic beast was formed from a bunch of circular, metallic objects. Each of the orbs that made up it's being had been scattered all over and were each double my height at the very least.

Each segment had a blue orb or crystal in the middle on both sides, that was surrounded by some yellow metal that was encased in purple and grey plating that was completely scratch free. The plates of purple metal, much like the same metal I'd seen scattered around on my way here, would have been far less durable than the yellow or grey- the justification for this being it's scratched surface where the grey and yellow was without any.

A purple spike ball lay resting on the remains of a battered tree, having been disconnected like each and every other segment of the machine, likely from the combat I'd missed.

The last, most imposing and damning of all, however, was the head.

It was incredibly big- larger than a pickup truck, with one, angular and _evil_ , piercing red eye that glinted in the sunlight like a ruby- dead and dark like a turned off computer screen as it stared into nothing, without a pupil or light that could be considered such.

The other side of the beings head was a caved-in a mess of the occasional burst of electricity, wires and melted material. I could see the inner workings of the being that would be so much more technologically advanced than anything my home had to offer, I'd doubt that any modern military could be dispensed against the thing and actually win in conventional warfare, disregarding missiles and the like.

The _especially_ damning part?

I knew this thing. I had beaten it with charged up shots to the face repeatedly- despite being big, menacing and large, I hadn't considered it a serious threat after beating it a second time, it's attack patterns leaving much to be desired as it just spat easy to dodge projectiles and slammed the ground with a tail- one I could see scattered across everything in this very moment.

It was a video game boss, one I had beaten so many times before- and now I was seeing it 'in the flesh'.

"Fuck."

My shoulders slumped, my mind numbed and I panicked.

My sweet, sweet blanket of ignorance had just been incinerated, battered and _eviscerated_ before my very eyes.

My mouth opened wordlessly, my words failing me for a moment as my eyes widened, the implications actually started to get through to me full force now I was no longer feigning ignorance.

"Shit."


	2. Chapter 2

This was bad, no, this was _horrifying_.

The slain mechanical beast stared at me with its lifeless eyes and I found myself feeling _fear_ tearing into my mind- ruining logical thought.

I felt like a few moments ago, I was walking through a haze and had only now woken up violently from whatever dream I had found myself in. My ignorance cast aside, revealing the undeniable, ugly truth staring at me from beneath the plaster of 'fucked' I'd just pulled off.

The sensations and immaculate clarity of everything had confirmed one sobering thought to me; this was no dream, the world itself was too vibrant and colourful- the feel of the sun on the back of my neck too real, the smell of fresh greenery so _earthy_ and nature-filled, the feel of the serpentine machine's head, it's cold, metallic smoothness beneath my touch too chilling, smooth and physical to _not_ be reality.

Even if it wasn't the reality I knew, _it was real_.

This was impossible, my mind knew it to be so, but the cold and solid feel of metal as I traced the sides of the beasts head said otherwise.

The Giga Aspis was, in essence, a giant snake. It had a purple and yellow colour scheme and was the first boss in the game Megaman ZX, something that I had once played religiously -because of how small my pile of games was- and had recently lost touch with, but I had held my memories of it dearly. Now, however, those memories left an irrational pit of dread inside me that made me feel they were more like a curse.

I held a hand to my chest, my heart felt like it was beating a mile a minute and my sweat was permeating through my t-shirt. In that forest clearing, I found myself doing something that I hadn't done since I was eleven.

I cried, and I cried some more until the tears stopped flowing and my tears had dried on my face, all the while my thoughts ran rampant, paranoia seeping in.

The realisation that I may very well never see my family again made me feel hollow, like a decrepit, barren _shell_ of my former self from mere minutes prior.

My mother was barely able to support herself, even with financial help from me and my grandmother, how she would deal without my own help now? Maybe she would be fine? Maybe she could move in with grandmother? No, she'd never leave the old place even if it killed her.

A traitorous thought in the back of my mind whispered back 'it just might'.

I felt a shiver go through me at the thought. It was too much to even _think_ of, let alone imagine.

Rationality told me I was exaggerating, that my mother would be more than likely fine, only heartbroken- but I was in no condition to let reason take hold.

I wiped away at my face with one of my sleeves and shook my head to clear my thoughts, if only a little. I took deep breaths until I calmed down to a manageable level.

A frenzied, but silent calm came over me- around me birds chirped, blissfully unaware and ignorant of my own inner torment.

Knowledge is power and the pen is mightier than the sword, these sayings could be true in the right circumstances, so... what did I know about this 'new' place I'd been dropped in that could help me now?

What could I do to make some good out of this situation?

The nearby city, maybe even the country, relied on a security corporation called Slither Inc. owned by a man named Serpent. He wanted to sacrifice the "souls" of the populace to a machine god thing to give him some sort of power in order to initiate what I think is, in essence, an extinction event. There are some vague thought about the 'evolution of humanity' or something equally silly when I think of him, but I don't remember how it relates to his goal.

Bah, that doesn't matter, if he gets the machine god then he wins and _everyone_ else loses, including me, that's enough to go on there.

Don't go near Slither Inc., don't piss off the security company or seem too suspicious or bad things would happen.

As far as I can remember, the only ones who can stop him are 'chosen ones', which happen to be the protagonist.

Was it... Vent? yeah, that's the one. Vent was the name of the protagonist, I'm pretty sure.

Vent lost his mother in an attack of some kind by Mavericks and that was sort of important I think? Wasn't it... yeah, at an amusement park near the forest area I just so happened to be in and was probably under the control of that purple monkey thing.

 _Purprill_ , a name I remember well, if only because he had to be one the most annoying bosses I can remember fighting in anything in the harder difficulties I'd dabbled in at times- though that might be biased, half-remembered memories talking.

I brought a hand to my chin in contemplation as a plan began to start forming, or at least the skeleton of one.

The Guardians, a group of people who wear green uniforms and red visors, were the good guys. Slither Inc. is the bad guy in this world. From this information I _should_ be able to formulate some plan that won't end in my horrific death or being tortured. I couldn't exactly walk into town, if my memories where correct then my ears may be a giveaway that I'm not normal.

The humans of this world had strange, rectangular, white boxes that covered their ears, presumably enhancing their hearing or something else that's useful- post modern societies tend to have those sorts of perks.

The Reploids, robotic people who are basically human, also shared this unique ear accessory- they just also had a red triangle stamped on their foreheads so it was easier to tell the difference in casual conversation.

So "doing as the Romans do" isn't completely possible, but I _might_ be able to find a way around it, failing that I'd have to wing it, which all things considered is probably not the greatest idea- but the only one I have.

Though that raised quite a few issues that where rather awkward to solve, namely being that even in my time some places where apparently thinking about putting tracking chips in their populace to better catch criminals, even if this wasn't true and I was being told lies the problem was still there.

In this world, that sort of tracking could easily be the norm and could prevent me from doing anything at all, like using doors, for all I know they could be locked through some tech fuckery I can't even begin to understand that locks them to set frequencies that only said chips could emit.

Fucking _Tinkertech_ man.

Anyway, assuming that could be just as dangerous to my personal well being as not assuming it because I would either be questioned by authorities or starve, damned if you do, damned if you don't.

Fuck it, I knew the general way to town and, despite my lack of technological 'upgrades' of any kind that the locals possessed, I could _probably_ walk to the nearest government-funded building and ask for assistance there, even with how crazy my story sounds the evidence for my case is overwhelming.

... _Or_ doing so could get me sent somewhere less than satisfactory, a mental institute or a police station come to mind.

Come to think of it, I never heard hide nor tail of any government in the game. It couldn't be that none existed and I doubted that the Slither company had taken charge, if so they would have been able to do _more_ in a quicker time frame than what they did.

The only people I could think of who might be able to help me are the Guardians or the Slither company, one was controlled by a maniac who could- and probably would- torture me for my knowledge if he ever found out about it (and didn't consider me crazy), while the other was an organisation made for helping people (I'm pretty sure anyway).

The choice was obvious... But the Guardians main base is a giant _fucking airship_ , so how I would reach them is beyond me-

A thought hit me, and I paused.

'Wait a minute, do I still...?'

I brought down my hand to riffle through my right trouser pocket and, sure enough, I found it, a light grey and black Nokia brick. Old faithful.

That could probably be tracked. The phone was old, even by the standards of the place I'd come from (which, granted, isn't saying much with smartphones and all), but here that age would be...

What does that make me, thinking on it? I came from a world that had gone past the Mayan calender's end of the world date, and the first Megaman took place in the _very specific_ time of "20XX". If the past of this world is anything like my own, then I might have some of the oldest human knowledge and technology, though only by technicality, in existence on my person.

At that point, would it even be traceable? The period between the technologies of this world and my own _might_ make whatever my phone used to send messages so below this world's tech level that it isn't even monitored by anything. I could have something untraceable... I doubt it, that would be _too_ lucky.

After thinking on it for a while, I place the phone back into my pocket and turned it off with the familiar rumble against my leg telling me that, yes, it _had_ turned off.

I'm pretty sure that _should_ be enough to prevent any tracking of the device if someone were to become aware of it, all I have to do is not draw attention to myself and I should be fine.

Easier said than done when my ears alone are probably freakish to look at.

Anyway, I've determined that my best bet would be to group up with the Guardians. They might believe me if I drop all the info-bombs ( _all of them_ ) I have available on the whereabouts of the boss robots which contain the magical (or, in this case, technological) maguffins they're searching for, they were looking for Biometal after all.

I _just so happen_ to know where to find them, I'm sure I could convince them to help me for such information- that is presuming I can convince them that it is actually valid and I'm not trying to be a mole for... someone.

Maybe I could even save Giro from dying an early death!

...After a few seconds of thought, I drop that line of thinking entirely, it looked to be a bit early in the morning, maybe eleven or twelve, and the entire course of events that led to that man's death was _already_ in motion.

The fact that it seemed to all happen within the time span of a single day certainly did well to discourage me.

An idea began to bloom- that I might be able to warn the Guardians-

And then I realised that the one place I'd find them, in town, was one I'd not be able to enter without going 'fuck it' and actively looking for them- which isn't exactly inconspicuous activity.

Well crap, there's that idea scrapped.

What _could_ I do here? If I did manage to buddie up with the Guardians and warn them of Giro's imminent demise, then a rather important life would be saved, but then the protagonist wouldn't get the second Biometal they needed to become the badass they were meant to be.

I have nothing against changing the flow of events by itself, it's a _good principle_. The problem I is what the butterflies caused by the disturbance could do- that worried me enough that I actually had to think about the implications of what warning them could have.

If I tell the Guardians of the Giro dilemma, a few options for 'worst case scenario' are glaringly obvious.

Scenario one, Giro doesn't die, instead, Vent does and he takes Vent's Biometal instead of the other way around.

This could arguably be better, as Giro is older and more experienced with his Biometal, but someone _still_ dies.

I don't like the sacrifice idea, it feels _wrong_ to think of someone like a pawn to be thrown away if a better piece can be saved from destruction, though if I have to I will.

Scenario two?

Both of them die, whether because they stay as a duo and one of them dies, likely Vent, who drags the other with them when they fight- or they both end up going to the highway that Giro would originally have died at, and instead of any 'Zx' union, the world is just left with a dead Giro and Vent, leaving no one to stop Serpent except for the Guardians, if they believe me.

It was... heavy. Thinking about this.

I knew so much, could _do_ so much...

If I so much as gave the wrong information, I could be responsible for the death of two people. People who could have saved the world in life- but never had the chance because I'd have stolen it from their grasp trying to save them both.

Eventually, I hit a wall and just hit that button at the back of my mind saying 'fuck it', instead deciding to just go to the Guardians, hope for the best and throw what knowledge I have at them until they decide to do something with me, the genetically normal human in a world where technology on nature are one in the same.

Nothing can go wrong with this plan, _nothing at all_.

That's sarcasm in case you didn't catch it.

Rough plan formed in my mind, with haste, I walked past the scattered corpse of the first boss of a childhood favourite game turned reality and took long, brisk steps towards the mountain of dirt that could be seen eclipsing the tree line in the far-off distance.

Beneath it, I knew there would be a door to a 'transerver'. That was something I could work with, even if only as a landmark to base further travel off of.

[]

[ ]

[ ] Section Break

[ ]

[]

It had only taken at most six or seven minutes of searching for me to find, and then enter the transerver room, if I had any sense I might have come a bit quicker since Fleuve, a mechanic for the Guardians that I could have spoke with, might he have still been here.

Oh well, no use crying over spilt milk and what not.

The transerver was a machine in a box room that was covered in plating of some iron-like metal. It was placed on practically everything and everywhere, including the four pillars that held up the relatively simple room, covered in red wires and some bluish plating for what I assumed was variety.

Funnily enough, the floor itself was covered in blue metallic sheets that _somehow_ produced heat. The effect was one that gave the room a comfy feel and left the bottoms of my shoes feeling pleasantly warm.

I guess the whole 'future' thing comes with some perks.

Never had I seen such a fantastically strange machine as the 'transerver', not that I was going to touch it, I was not willing to risk doing so lest I set it off and risk either being spliced into thousands of pieces or being torn apart at the atomic level, killed, then reassembled into a clone of myself somewhere else as is the theme with most teleportation technology as far as I am aware.

I'm probably being silly, but I don't have the required knowledge to make any true judgements for that sort of thing, all I know is that it can be used to teleport people who aren't even entirely human, and whether it works on me or not is something I'd _rather_ not test.

I just had a quick nose around for anything that I could use to my advantage that might be lying around, but...

There was nothing. Nothing I could use to defend myself from the machines that I knew where outside, not even a crowbar. It was either _them_ , or risk the teleporter.

I didn't like my chances with the teleporter, so I took the door and left as quietly and carefully as possible.

The door opened as I drew close, which at least answered the issue of if I could or couldn't use them, and closed behind me as I stepped out.

A few plants awaited me on the other side of the door, not much else. I knew that somewhere around here there was another door that led to the city, another that led to a scrapyard and, from past experience- the door before and the general placement of everything, especially the Giga Aspis corpse- I had a _somewhat decent_ chance of being right on this one.

I turned to my immediate right, hoping that nothing was there to ruin my day and came face to face with what the data disks of the game called a "Eyeballoon", I could only blink in surprise.

The floating eyeball blinked back.

I slowly backed away, never turning my eye off of the floating thing.

It continued to stare at me, doing nothing, it is then I realised something that should probably have been very apparent the moment I'd seen it.

The mechanical eyeball had no reason to hit me, and as such, the ring around it that was normally a violent red was a rather tranquil light green surrounding it's orange 'pupil'.

They only shot their strange microwave-beam attack at you in game when you were carrying a weapon. Or, to be a bit pedantic, when you looked like an armoured maverick who was going around dashing and almost _begging_ to be shot on sight for looking like you're about to murder someone.

Well, _that's_ convenient.

I walked up to the mechanised, floating eyeball. After stopping before I go too close to the thing, I waved at it, putting on a smile to appear friendly.

Stupid, I know, but I was still getting use to the whole 'this is an actual robot with something resembling actual intelligence' part. You don't get that same feeling from a dead machine.

It just blinked in response, focusing on me for a moment, then moving it's single eye to the sky and lazily drifting off into the air, eventually fading from sight as it floated through the branches of some trees.

Satisfied with this, I walked past where it had been and hoped that my ears were at least somewhat obscured from view by my rather bushy hair. It was a good strategy for concealing them, if it worked.

I decided to feel my ears to be sure- a quick check told me that they likely weren't visible without a good eye (ironic, considering what I'd just seen). I tried not to think about it in a rather silly attempt to not put any attention on my ears and continued going to my immediate right until I came across the end of the line in the form of a machine.

There stood a giant, robotic yellow giraffe, chewing peacefully on something that I'm pretty sure isn't vegetables or plants (the glowing green stuff looked like cartoonish radioactive goop for God's sake!).

It's neck was a long collection of ball-shaped segments, it's front had a duo of pipes flowing with glowing green fluid trailing down it's 'stomach', and it was made from yellow metal with the occasional bits of green.

It flicked a single robotic ear in my direction, as well as an eye for a moment, before turning back to looking out mindlessly at the forest and... chewing.

Chewing without a care in the world.

It almost seemed like it had the mind of an actual animal- though if that's actually true or not I'm uncertain and am unwilling to test- just because something eats the vegetation it doesn't mean it won't try to fuck you up.

Stags are proof enough- I don't want firsthand experience from some giant, radiation-chewing giraffe.

I did my best to ignore the docile creature-robot-thing as I pulled myself over the hill it was 'grazing' near and walked on.

I knew where to go, I'd gone through something somewhat resembling this section of the forest many times before- I just needed to apply my knowledge, hope the two dimensional level was accurate to the world around me...

 _And_ hope I didn't get lost, that to.

[]

[ ]

[ ] Section Break

[ ]

[]

I didn't take very long to get to the top of some nearby hill, find the path at it's top, then walk down said path until I eventually ended up in the area I wanted to be, one I was familiar with- a certain clearing and a certain door.

A pair of giant lizards with treads for legs continued to pretend to eat from the local plant life as I pondered what I was to do next, ignoring them in their entirety.

I wasn't _sure_ if this was the door that led to the city, and I'd already past the other one rather idiotically.

Knowing my luck, it _would_ be the scrapyard.

Thinking 'screw it' I walked in, expecting to see a lot of scrap metal and robots wanting to kill me.

Instead, I got a city. A second example of my knowledge not being entirely correct.

This was... nice to say the least. There was a few people milling around, minding their own business and, just in general, relaxing. Not wanting to be singled out, I pulled a bit of my rather lengthy hair over my ears, did my best to hide any worries or woes I had and tried to walk like I knew where I was going and had a purpose.

Emphasis on "tried".

I could tell from here that people where curious about me, I probably would be as well in their case, I was painfully aware that I didn't fit in despite my best attempts to do so.

A young adult with a not-so freshly shaven beard wearing a t-shirt with a band on it likely more than a few hundred years old as of the time, wearing worn jeans made from the cotton of plants that _might not even exist anymore_ and trying rather visibly to not be seen is probably not the most inconspicuous of people.

Especially when you look at the far more complex and fantastical outfits that everyone else wore, from purple and black, almost Victorian style skirts to minimalist, green 'jackets' with long short sleeves and other strange things. Another problem for me in trying to 'fit in' would be the generally more 'healthy' look everyone seemed to have wherever I look.

Everyone stood out- very few of them even looked like you could label them 'unattractive' (something I easily could be, especially when compared to these people with almost 'clean' faces and my own with a few little marks on my face, mostly dirt) and I was obviously not the same as them, it was just a matter of looking at me.

I was... different and an alien in unknown territory, and in this case, that _probably_ wasn't a good thing.

More sarcasm, read it and weep.

After a while of just wondering around looking for something that might point me in the right direction and _hoping_ I wasn't approached, I was _of course_ approached by someone.

Now, I'm not exactly shy. I'm not talkative unless it's snark in response to an insult, but if I get talking I can talk for Britain- my mouth runs fast, but it's hard to get it running, so to speak.

The girl that approached me? She was someone I didn't want to meet, didn't want to speak to or acknowledge, but had to to prevent further suspicion.

She was shorter than me, a common thing at least where I used to live, and wore a blue jacket that reached down to around the bottom of her ribcage. It's sleeves were basically maybe a meter off from her shoulders, beneath it was just a layer of really dark grey- pretty much black. It was like a body-wide swimsuit for the closest comparison. The only places I could really see it end would be the tips of her fingers.

She was the only one wearing something like _that_ in particular, it was unique, and it tickled a memory I couldn't _quite_ bring forth.

Her name was, though I didn't know it at the time, Aile. She looked so familiar to me that it wasn't even funny, but I ignored that line of thought in actually trying to listen to her and not incite further attention from anyone.

"-re you sure you don't need help? You look lost" Her eyes reminded me of my mother because of their colour- emerald green, I found that I couldn't bare it and instead just settled for staring at her nose.

I didn't want to think about that right now. _Especially_ not now when I need to not be conspicuous as fuck.

"I'll be fine, just doing a bit of wandering is all." I gave her, trying to end the conversation there without leaving an opening for further words.

She merely shrugged and raised an eyebrow at me, tilting her head quizzically.

Thankfully, after a while she took the hint, shrugged, and walked off on her merry way humming a tune.

One that was so _familiar_ yet so impossible to pin down.

After that was over I turned to a street that I didn't go through last time and walked onwards, my search for any of the Guardians had so far been unsuccessful, but I believed I could (and would) find them eventually.

[]

[ ]

[ ] Section Break

[ ]

[]

I had spent what felt like a few hours just wandering around aimlessly on a slowly emptying stomach in search of what was feeling more and more like an unreachable goal. I should probably ask around about the Guardians but... I just didn't want to draw attention to mysel-

A loud groan came from my stomach, a few people looked at me curiously while I tried my best to ignore my hunger.

Traitorous gut! You're meant to work for me!

In response, my gut started rumbling even more, if I was fluent in the language of my own body I probably would have heard something along the lines of "Get me more food or I'll eat you."

I'm probably going to starve if I don't try getting something soon, the only ideas I could think of were:

A) Attempt to steal food from someone, I didn't see that working well.

B) Try to hunt for leftover E-Crystals in the scrap yard area near Innerpeace, this I saw going even worse.

Or C) Ask around for information on the Guardians and hope that they'll be able to get me something to eat, presuming I can manage to grant myself leverage over them).

The first two were... _not_ exactly something I wanted to do and the third option seemed logical, but-

My stomach grumbled at me, breaking my thoughts into a jumble as hunger took over.

Fuck it, C it is.

I turned to the first person I saw and attempted to initiate a conversation, hoping to find a way to the closest equivalent of a Guardian office.

He was a man in a suit, when I approached his face seemed to tighten.

"Excuse me sir could yo-" I began.

"Leave me alone, can't you see I have better things to deal with?" The cold voice answered back, cutting through my reply like a... really sharp thing through water, I guess.

The butter metaphor is overused, bite me.

He seemed to speed up as he passed me by- the thought that he might just not want to talk with someone as shady looking as me came to mind, and I accepted that as the logical answer.

It didn't take more than a few seconds to find a woman on a bench. I asked her about the Guardians, and she didn't seem overly skittish when I introduced myself, so I likely don't have to worry about her pulling what the other guy did.

Apparently, they had a HQ in Innerpeace in the western area of the city- after she gave me directions I thanked her and walked towards what may be my salvation.

I guess all I had to do was ask...

Who would have known? Not me apparently.

I'm denser than a neutron star after all.

[]

[ ]

[ ] Section Break

[ ]

[]

After getting a few more directions from other people on the way to the local Innerpeace Guardian HQ I finally arrived. A clock on one of the walls in the circular main room read 14:12, it was a lot earlier than I thought it was apparently.

That raised another question: what was the month and year?

Somewhere around the 2300 - 2500 mark I _think_.

Not sure, should probably check discreetly whenever possible.

I slowly headed on up to the main register, but found myself stopping as many different scenarios went through my head that made me begin to question my judgement and the actual merits of attempting what I was about to do- but alas, I had my choice forced onto me before I could really think on the matter.

A middle-aged man wearing the Guardian get-up (a green cap and cyclops look-alike visor with a green vest, the Guardian symbol of an orange box with a red 'G' at its centre on both shoulders) called to me.

"Hey, we haven't had any visitors in a while, why don't you take a seat?" He asked with a warm smile, motioning to one of those office seats that kids always wanted to have in school that could spin and move because of wheels attached to the base.

Swivel chairs, I think?

I gracefully took the seat and sat in front of the green-clad gentlemen, very, _very_ uncertain about my new plan, hunger having been forgotten for the moment.

Even then I _knew_ for sure it would fail, but I still don't regret doing what I did.

"I would like to forward a message to the leader of your organisation" I spoke with a voice as confident as I could make it.

Even then, I knew that I was about to do something that could end in disaster and more than likely would.

"Oh really? A letter I presume?" He seemed a bit peeved, but I just hoped that the aggressive approach would work here, I didn't have much to really leverage if this didn't work.

"How is Alouette?"


	3. Chapter 3

"...Excuse me?" the Guardian asked with a tone that betrayed nothing but confusion at my words- it was like he had heard me ask something along the lines of 'where is the nearest rainbow unicorn?', that kind of confusion at hearing something strange enough to make the aforementioned 'rainbow unicorn' be confused.

This... is going to end badly, it can't really _not_ end badly. Why did I try this? What unholy force made me think that this was a good idea-

I took a moment to calm myself, keeping my face as plain as possible during the brief period of recovery from my own stupidity. Once I felt (barely) more comfortable and less stressed (again, barely), I injected as much steel into my voice as I could and repeated what I wanted in a clear manner.

"I want to send a message to your leader, whether she actually gets it now or in a few months or weeks doesn't matter, I just want you to send my message." I spoke as calmly as possible, trying to ignore the sweat slowly forming on my brow.

"You do realise that if this is a prank w-" The man began, the line of his mouth dropping into a slight frown as he spoke.

"You won't have to worry about that." I interjected, cutting him off mid sentence.

"Just send the message, she'll know what it means."

The Guardian went still, frown staying for a moment, until eventually he leaned over to pull something from below the desk.

It was an average-sized, smooth white block of technology- though it looked nothing like what you'd expect from an Apple product or someone copying their aesthetic of white and smooth. The 'laptop', as the Guardian placed it down on the desk before him, unfolded with ease into two very thin, though surprisingly blocky halves.

Soundlessly, he tapped away on what I'm guessing would be the device's keyboard, the 'keys' in question not making the typical 'click clack' from typing on the keys of a 'modern' computer as I knew them.

After what I'm guessing was 'logging in' to the keyboard, the visor-wearing man nodded his head, giving me a look I couldn't decipher through his ruby-coloured visor.

"Alright, name and age please?"

I nearly obliged him, then I _really_ thought about it and paused, frowning.

"Why do you need my name?"

"So we can send a reply to you at a later date, of course." Came the deadpan response from the Guardian, who didn't seem very pleased with the response I'd given him.

That makes sense.

"Jack Southwark." I could lie here... should I though?

It couldn't hurt, being where I am and my current lack of any information of any kind. A lie, of course, is what I told him.

"Seventeen."

At the mention of the word, I found my mind wandering to this one time an old friend and I sneaked into a bar and managed to snag a beer around our seventeenth birthday's- we were born roughly ten days apart or so, me in April 20th and him on the 2nd of May.

 _Oh_ the nostalgia.

...And now I want to be home even more than before. _Fuck my life. Why do I do this to myself?_

The Guardian soundlessly typed in the information I'd given him on his keyboard as I mentally beat myself for making my thoughts drift again into territory I didn't want to visit.

Thankfully, a distraction came.

"Your message please?" He asked, hands and eyes still on the screen before him.

"How is Alouette, a-l-o-u-e-t-t-e." I supplied, mentally shrugging as I tried my best to recall the specific pronunciation of her name.

A simple message, but a good statement- ' _I know who you are._ '

The Guardian typed even more things into the computer, presumably my message. After a few minutes of typing, he ceased entirely and turned his gaze towards me

"Do you require anything else?"

"No, Thank you for your time."

With that, I gave him a short, mock salute and span around, marching myself out of the Guardian building, feeling a sudden urge to facepalm.

Wait... I should have asked if there was a place I could get some food!

Cursing myself, I continued walking, albeit reluctantly, not wanting to draw any more attention to myself than I probably already am.

I was about to exit when the main door opened and a small group of Guardians came through. I politely stepped to the side and let them pass.

One was tall (and I mean _tall_ , unrealistically so) and broad with a chiseled face, a four o' clock shadow that gave his already intimidating stature a more manly look plain and easy to see. He had a tough and rugged look to him, with a wide smile that contrasted with his amost brutish appearance.

The one to his immediate right, overshadowed by the giant of a man's size, was short even without the comparison- maybe around up to my nose in height. Her hair was close to red, but a little bit more orange in colour, styled into a small ponytail that poked out from under her visor which, along with the other two, was pulled up over her eyes.

The third was a much more familiar sight, a lanky person with a look of nervousness to him that didn't befit his job and a darkish-blue cut of her covering his left eye.

On anyone else it might have made them look 'punk-like', but on this one Guardian it just couldn't make me see him as anything other than 'that one dude who hid in a room and teleports away if you approach him because he's a bit of a wuss'.

Unfair, but that's what I thought.

They... I knew them, even in their more realistic bodies I _knew_ who they were. Guardians, specifically, the Guardians that Vent would end up speaking with to finish a 'test' that essentially boiled down to a game of hide and seek.

This is good- it at least gives me an idea of where I am 'story' wise in this world, which means I am better prepared for this.

Once the group of three passed me by, I continued on out the front door with a slight frown on my face and began walking without a real aimed direction, just thinking.

This had the potential to end either really well or really badly, _horrifically_ badly.

I was personally hoping it would end well, but... Prepare for the worst and hope for the best, as they say.

'Alouette' could either try hunting me down (which I find unlikely, she seems to kind for that), or she might just get any Guardians to "convince" me to visit their flying fortress (which I find unlikely for the same reason), but then I could also be wrong in the assumption that she even _is_ Alouette-

I paused, stopping on the spot.

"Fuck."

Well shit, I had just gone on an assumption that, on actually thinking about it, _might not even be correct_ , I hope it is cause' if it ain't then-

My stomach rumbled angrily at me, demanding I submit to its caustic authority and that of my own body, a message wrapped in mystery, intrigue and no small amount of anger.

I got the message loud and clear- food now, think later.

I got up and stretched my arms and legs, groaning as an almost unhealthy number of pops and cracks escaped from my bones like gas from a leaking pipe.

Alright, I needed money, to be more specific; I needed _E-Crystals_ , gemstone-like things of an undetermined size. The few ways I could think of to get them that didn't involve needing an identity (like getting a job or the like) were _incredibly_ dangerous to my continued wellbeing, but I was starting to think I had no choice.

Half starved, not exactly in a good frame of mind and in need of money, I made up my mind.

I needed to find away to destroy incredibly advanced robots that may or may not want me dead, and killing off the Slither Inc. bots wasn't going to help me on that front since I would just become a wanted man and that wouldn't get me anywhere.

So, I need to kill death robots but I lack anything to shoot them with.

I am NOT getting in close quarters with a robot, I'm not risking death by some bullshit mechanical punch. That way lies _death_.

But I don't really have a choice.

I could always try hitting a Galleon, Galleom? Bah, a _purple bastard_ in the face-helmet with a random piece of metal, the game did say that they were made of cheap material.

Would that mean I could beat one to death?

Well, there's no time like the present to probably kill yourself trying to get money for your empty stomach.

I walked north, I would _continue_ north through the streets and stacks of strangely vibrantly coloured buildings until my destination was reached.

I was going to walk to the edge of the city, and find my way to the outside from there.

It wasn't much, but it was a plan.

A stupid, stupid, foolhardy plan.

[]

[ ]

[ ] Section Break

[ ]

[]

It took me at most a few minutes of strolling to reach the large wall, one that cast a shadow over a few small houses on the outskirts of Innerpeace. After enjoying the beautiful scenery for a bit, looking at biomechanical marvels like _half-metal fucking trees and flowers_ , I continued, guided by the towering wall towards the same entrance I had originally got into the city from.

I felt like I was being watched, I tried to ignore the feeling.

I am a paranoid person. As of late, I had been trying to suppress such paranoia. Never believed in the whole 'feeling people watching you' thing anyway.

I walked through the doorway and continued straight on, waving at one of the lizard creatures that was still sitting around and pretending to chew on plants which in reality it was probably only gnawing on.

It paid me no heed, peacefully eating its chosen greenery as the red crystalline thing atop its head throbbed with a ruby glow.

Past it, there was the same beaten path I'd came past earlier that day, one that, looking at it now, forked into two paths: one going up a mountain of dirt, the other more level and even, leading to the door I'd been through and to that giraffe... machine.

I made sure my hair was still covering my ears (it was, and donehow it seemed to have actually workef) and took the long path up the mountain.

It had taken barely any time to get to 'top' of the hill, but my search for the door had thus far been unsuccessful.

A faint 'vwoompf' came from my left during my search. Curious, I checked it out and found what I was looking for, a closed-door and the entrance to the scrapyard I'd been looking for.

Overjoyed by finding what I needed, I didn't think about how _something_ had to open the door for me to have heard it.

I was too busy going inwards into the metal-filled scrapyard, hoping that I could find a Galleon or other robotic being that I might be able to beat to death with some scrap material.

[]

[ ]

[ ] Section Break

[ ]

[]

I am probably - _most definitely_ \- going to die here.

Foolishly, I had picked up a long club of some metal, which seemed sturdy enough, and had gone looking for a Galleon to get the jump on.

Instead, a Galleon had got the jump on me.

Apparently advanced death machines on legs from the future were _really_ perceptive, who knew?

I could hear the purple death machine even now, still tirelessly running after me with mechanical thumps heralding its approach, every so often a trio of energy pellets would pass me by and hit some random bits of scrap lying on the floor, not hitting me because of _luck_ more than anything else.

The fact that most of the scrap and discarded material those balls of yellow hit became deformed -presumably from heat- told me that I _did not_ want to get hit by even _one_ if I value living.

But all I can do is run and _hope to whatever god there is I don't get shot_.

I searched around frantically as I sprinted through the junkyard, likely getting the attention of _even more_ fucking killer-robots, because _of fucking course they'd hear me_.

This theory was proven correct when a strange orange and yellow thing attached to a spring tall came out of nowhere and attempted to tackle me, missing only because I saw the orange thing quick enough to duck down mid-run, tripping myself up in the process.

At the back of my mind, the name "Springer" emerged.

I had barely gotten my hands on the floor in a mad attempt to scramble away from the fucker when it decided it wanted to play hot potato and _exploded_.

Something interesting about explosions caused by a 'Springer'- they can, and do, send shrapnel everywhere in lethal amounts at very lethal speeds. The robots are essentially walking- well, hopping- grenades, except, unlike grenades, they can move and _happen to be about as large as you but much heavier_.

I know this, as quite a few bits of some of that very same shrapnel had dug into my arms and I swear I could feel something in my back, well, apart from the seering, all-consuming _pain_.

I had fallen over, and I couldn't get back up, crawling wasn't helping and I was now face to face with a purple arm buster and something resembling a welding mask.

My mind made the connection in an instant, this and the thing in the forest had the same head.

Funny what you remember in the moments before imminent death.

In other news, _shit_.

I had nowhere to run (and even if I did I'm pretty sure I was paralyzed in my lower body). I was shit out of luck. I, was absolutely, positively, without a doubt _fucked_ beyond belief.

And then the 'gunfire' started, not from the Galleon mind you, but from someone I couldn't see from this angle.

The Galleon clearly didn't find me very threatening or had the mental capacity to fire when fired upon as it had turned to its aggressor on a dime and returned a hail of 'plasma pellets' towards the new foe.

If I had to guess, I'd say none of them actually hit because literal seconds later the buster on its arm was melted into a useless blob. Shards of its armour came flying off as its body flashed with a strange white-ish field, glowing white with heat as if they'd just come off a blacksmith's forg right as that 'energy field' seemed to just... break down.

The Galleon stared at its arm, almost drawing a laugh out of me at the absurdity of it all-

But despite myself, I found a great deal of fear swell from inside me, not really coming from anywhere in particular-

Except for the fact I'm probably dying, that's most likely a part of it.

I tried to move, but I couldn't no matter how hard I tried, feeling limp and numb all over. A loud 'clunk' startled me as the Galleon fell onto its side missing an arm and half of its "face".

I, as any sane individual would be in such a situation, panicked like fuck as I tried to move away from whatever had just 'killed' the Galleon.

I was unsuccessful.

What little of my body I could feel was shaking like a leaf in the middle of a tornado as someone -presumably the Galleon slayer and maybe the one to finish the job- approached me.

She was a woman with dusky skin. She either had broad shoulders or broad shoulderplating- each part ot her was covered in some body armour made of what looked to be leather and metal, metal that plated some of her, presumably weakpoints.

She took one look a me with her cold, dusty red eyes and snorted. Her face went expressionless after she had apparently stopped being amused by my pain -fucking _sadists_ \- and asked me a simple question.

"How do you feel?" Her voice was slow and soft, warm, like someone attempting to calm a wild animal.

It wasn't enough to calm me.

I couldn't answer, I didn't have the strength and I'm pretty sure I was bleeding out, so I settled for glaring as furiously as I could at her.

She sighed. "Well isn't this lovely. Know that I'm only helping you because society would _probably_ demand it."

Not an answer I was expecting, but one I was rather happy to hear all things considered. I was expecting something that would lead to my death. I felt relieved- at least until she hoisted me onto her shoulder and made the numbness covering my torso and lower body flare up into a pain worse than anything I've ever felt in my life.

Somehow, I managed to start talking again.

I have no clue how.

"Fucking-" I managed to hiss, clenching my teeth hard enough I almost exoected them to shatter.

"Shitfuckow!" I added right after, drawing a frustratingly amused snort from the woman currently hauling me over her shoulder.

"That's a nice mouth you got there" came a rather dry reply from a rather sassy individual who I'd like to punch for being ' _oh-so-helpful_ '.

"Oh shut it." I growled, feeling _fire_ lance across the flesh if my back, as if I'd been lashed by a lemon-laced whip.

' _Ow_ ' doesn't even begin to cut it.

"I'll drop you."

"Fuck off, you wouldn't dare."

I could _feel_ the smirk and sheer sass as she responded: "Oh really?"

I think you and I are going to get on like a house on fire missy.

I didn't have the energy to respond.

I have no idea where she took me after that, I was rather out of it at that point because she had, as I was told later, given me a quick injection of some depressant that I couldn't name and was likely years ahead of whatever my 'time' had.

What I _can_ say is that what happened next was not something I had planned for.

It was something I am happy happened though.

[]

[ ]

[ ] Section Break

[ ]

[]

Have you ever had that feeling of dread pool in your stomach when you awake one night out of your normal home because you're visiting a friend's, at a relative's house or otherwise in an unfamiliar location? That confusion, then the cold stab of ice hastening you awake like a foghorn?

My eyes were assaulted by the brightest mother _fucking_ light I have ever seen, and the ice-stomach inducing sight of an unfamiliar ceiling.

I wasn't fully lucid, so I panicked- or at least I _tried_ to.

My body was too sluggish, slow, all but locked in place by what felt like a heavy blanket covering the entirety of the 'me' below the dull, white bed sheet. Because, of course, I was on a bed.

And injured, though that specific little _tidbit_ of information didn't come to me until I'd calmed down enough to stop struggling against the blanket and failing about as hard as a mosquito would.

After managing to calm myself enough to start trying to recall whatever had happened to me, I actually tried observing where I was in order to possibly jog my memory. I was greeted by someone I didn't recognise sitting on a grey chair somewhere to my left, reading a book which I paid little heed, more concerned with, well... The person reading the book.

She, and wasn't _that_ something that helped jog my memory a little, stared over a page from the book I recognised to be somewhat blue, before blinking at me in disbelief.

Blue hair like the British sky when it wasn't trying to drown you, eyes that were red (and wasn't _that_ odd to see in the flesh) like a blood-stained rose with about as much humour in them, dark complexion.

...Blue hair. Red eyes.

Right, video game world with super technology from Japan, normal colours need not apply.

"Awake now are we?" came a reply from a rough voice, one I _wasn't_ familiar with. It was hers, probably, it came from her general direction.

Red eyes, female... just like the person who helped me before.

And _then_ realised where I was. A hospital.

"Well I guess thanks are in orde-" I began. But, apparently, my line of thought wasn't allowed because it got cut down faster than a

"You can thank me later, right now I want to know the why and how you don't have any standard bodily cybernetic modifications." she was frowning as she flicked through the pages of the book labeled "The Call Of The North Wind" that had a picture of a sailor and a ship at sea on the cover.

"Legion is not exactly slacking when it comes to this sort of thing, how'd you do it?"

I have no idea who that is.

Well that made things _far_ more complicated. This 'Legion' was likely a governing body of some sort-

 _Hadn't_ I been thinking about that? Wait, don't get distracted, focus on the task at hand.

A small and dull electric hum permeated the room in lieu of her and my silence as I tried to think of an appropriate response.

Of course, I chose _try to tell the truth even if it's so insane no one could possibly believe me_.

"What if I told you that I don't-"

All it took was her raising a hand and letting a horrendous scowl come to her, an ugly expression that I will admit made me a lot more anxious than it probably should have (I blame the drugs), to stop me in my tracks.

"Cut the crap." She growled. "You're not even a sentence in and I know you're lying."

Well _fucknuggets_. I wasn't even trying to lie.

If she was going to be like that...

Frowning, I gave her my own growl, an attempt at showing my own irritation and trying to gain some power over the conversation.

...A word from the wise: don't try to grab for power when your 'opponent' holds all of the cards, whether that be in a social setting or in an actual fight- it can only end in embarrassment or, at its worse, the termination of whatever they were giving you.

"I don't have to say shit."

She arched a brow curiously. I think I might have heard a snort, actually.

"My house," ' _really?_ ', I couldn't help but think, bemused. ' _Her house is a hospital?_ '

"My rules- _and_ my medical shit, you lie anymore and I won't let you use it." The still-unnamed woman explained, voice level and even as she essentially spelled out my 'demise'.

Wait, what?

A quick peek to my immediate left showed me that I was currently being connected to... a saline drip. How I hadn't noticed it or the 'wires' currently draping off the side of the bed and, likely beneath the blanket, currently transferring the contents of the metal and plastic device is beyond me.

Isn't this just great!? I'm trapped under sheets, am so weak I can't even get out of those sheets, and I happen to be in a situation that ca only end in awkward questions or (albeit, my mind was likely exaggerating her seriousness) death.

My gaze as I looked at this woman, I'd like to imagine, was stern and strong- it was probably _anything but_ , however.

I _have_ to tell her, she looks serious as all hell about letting me die (again, I blame drugs for this assumption). I felt weak, weaker than I have ever felt before, I can confidently guess that I was only still alive now because of her- if that "hospitality" ran out then I was as dead as a rat in the house of a crazy cat lady, no, _even deader than that_.

A small bit inside of me, however, whispered that _perhaps_ I should just check how serious she was.

"I... don't want to tell you." I tried, putting on my best brave face.

"And _I_ don't think you have a choice in the matter." Came the neutral-toned reply.

She _was_ serious, fuck.

I leaned further into the comfortable sheets of the bed I found myself in, and thought about what to do.

Pro; she might help me out if she knows the truth, emphasis on _might_.

Con; if she doesn't believe me then I'm a dead man, or being put in a mental institute.

Nice choices there.

I made my choice, though some might say it really wasn't one.

"Well, I'm not exactly 'from around here' you see."

She oozed an aura of something not-quite sarcasm, like a mix between it and a sadistic smugness that would make most cats jealous of her.

"That much was obvious." She chuckled, her eyes flicking from the page before her to my own. Her face was like stone, cold and expressionless with no cracks.

"By that I mean, I'm not from this wo-"

"Don't. Bullshit. _Me_." the response was fast and curt, it cut through mine like a flaming knife through butter in the summer sun.

Of course, all I could do is sigh and try to explain myself even further.

"I'm telling the truth, just let me speak."

After depositing the book on her lap, she leaned her cheek on her fist and motioned with her free arm for me to continue.

She did _not_ look amused. Not int he slightest.

"I am not from this world, I am from a world that I'm presuming is parallel to yours and from your worlds past, before Reploids, before all this _techno_ -shit."

And that right there was possibly the most embarrassing and stupid thing I've ever said.

That same electric hum filled the room, but not for long.

"So what you're saying is you're supposed to be old as fuck and crazy? _Lovely_." came her dry response combined with a rolling of her eyes.

"I feel as if you are mocking me," I half-asked, half-said. If I had been able, I would have tried to move an arm to make a particularly rude gesture, but it was (thankfully) stiff and unmoving. "I still can't seem to muster the energy to give a fuck."

It was a lie, but for a moment I actually believed it- _then_ I remembered why I was in a bad situation, possibly a life or death one, and regretted ever saying anything.

She looked at me with a condescending smile that might have looked to be pity on anyone else- she wore it too strangely, though, and her tone was just too damn higher-than-thou too really consider it as such.

"That'll be the litre and a quarter of blood you lost." Came the hammer that struck the nail in the sign labelled 'oh shit, we've got shit flowing out from the woodworks' in my mind.

Well... that isn't good at all (understatement of the millenia).

"How the fuck am I even still alive?" I asked, the actual implications not really hitting me until after I'd asked the question- that's a _dead_ number, I should be _dead_ right now.

What the fuck?

"A little magic, some saline and nanites with just a _little_ luck, anyway, we're getting off track." Was her _almost_ emotionless reply, coloured with a humoured, mirthful glare.

"Oh. Ok then." I coughed a bit.

Inwardly I was screaming, outwardly I think I was still experiencing some sort of shell shock.

I had tiny machines crawling inside me right now.

I was stuck halfway through geeking out at the thought _and_ screaming.

 _I have tiny machines crawling around my insides right now._

 _What sort of horror movie did I crawl into to deserve this?_

"What do you want to know?"

Her evil smile she donned after hearing my change of heart did _not_ leave me with confidence.

[]

[ ]

[ ] Section Break

[ ]

[]

I had found out that her name was Maki (spelt Mac -like a big mac- 'e' as in the letter) Morrovitch (sounds Russian, probably isn't due to the time period) and she had forced as much as she could out of me, and had, in return, promised to look after me until I could start walking on my feet again.

Which probably wouldn't be for a few days.

 _Only a few days._

I guess living in the future comes with benefits... one of which being the advanced healthcare- er, is this really 'healthcare'? Wouldn't this be... private care or something?

Bah.

Girl works fast, I can tell you that much. It had only been a few days since I was put into this state and I already felt _at least_ thirty percent better! At home, that thirty percent would probably feel more like 0%.

Because I'd be dead.

Personally, I blame the nanites and not her medical skills, I'm pretty sure they where sub-par. Not that I would tell her that, anyway.

If someone out there can hear me, somehow, and ever meets Maki Morrovitch through some cosmic accident or incident beyond or through their own control- do _not_ anger her.

These simple words could save your life, or your physical well being.

She is _really_ scary when angry, she just stares at you in this real creepy manner that makes you feel like your skin is trying to rip itself of of you just to get out of her sight.

I have this lingering suspicion that the red eyes might have something to do with her intimidating powers- not in a 'supertech-bordering-magic' way, just in a 'red is the colour of violence and she's staring at you like a week-starved lioness would a deer' kind of way.

Judge is still out on that one though.

I got to experience her "stare rage" when I had slipped with my speech and accidentally insulted her (please, don't ask. I have enough trouble repressing that memory as is), her face had just gone blank for a moment before her face was covered with seething rage that had frozen me in place like that very same deer in the headlights.

Just thinking about it made me shiver.

In other news, I learned that she was what the local people called a scrapper, someone who picked through the local scrapyard, took metal from the area and refined it into a more usable form to sell off to other people.

The armour that she wore was made with some of said refined materials, so was the weapon she had used to save me. It was a 'semi-automatic pistol' that fired three plasma pellets in a short burst, apparently 'averaging' at around ten bursts for every "clip" it used.

...It looks like a fucking white box with a purple "sci-fi" glow coming from the barrel. As if someone got a kid to design the fucking thing.

Anyway, she had brought me news that the Guardians where searching around for someone with my rough description every so often, she had asked me what they wanted, I had told her and she didn't give two shits.

When I got out of here though...

I was going to pay them a _visit_. It would be a fun visit- I'd been planning what to say exactly when I met them.


	4. Chapter 4

I woke up covered in cold sweat and trapped beneath layers of white sheets. I still felt tired and weak, even sleeping for most of the day hadn't been able to help me.

I sighed as the nightmare that had forced me awake just faded away back into my mind. The room that I was going to be stuck in for the better half of the week was plain, a single bed in a cube room with a table opposite said bed, five metal chairs gleamed in the pale moonlight that entered through the sole window to my right.

The simple digital alarm clock bathed my face with a soft, red glow.

It wasn't different to a 'modern' alarm clock.

I found myself slightly disappointed at this.

12:13.

'I love waking up early, I really, really love it.'

In case you couldn't tell, that was sarcasm in my thoughts.

I knew something was... wrong about the scene. After a while of observing the moonlit room, I noticed it, a strange object on a table next to my bed that Maki had been generous enough to give me after a while.

It was basking both in the alabaster glow of the gibbous moon, and the red light of the digital alarm clock.

Sluggish from disuse, I brought out a tired arm and brought the circular thing up to my eyes in order to inspect it. The yellow coin glimmered in the white light of the not-so-full moon.

I was greeted by a lightly glowing, green power button and a darker shade of gold in the shape of an 'R' inside it.

I turned the coin on it's back, the golden material on the back was engraved with an image of someone in a uniform, one that I couldn't properly determine because of the coins lack of detail on the silhouette engraved on its side. It was darker gold outline to colour the individual.

This coin raised question after question in my groggy mind.

When had this gotten here? Why did the power button glow? What was it?

These and many other thoughts that, with hindsight, were _really_ fucking stupid to be debating at midnight when I should be resting to better recover.

I blame my tiredness, _and_ the drugs.

Never was a huge fan of mysteries, or good at solving them. Being half asleep wouldn't help me solve this one.

Shrugging, I placed it back on the table and let myself drift calmly back to sleep, not possessing the brain power to even try to figure the thing out. I was getting drowsy.

I was out within the minute.

[]

[ ]

[ ] Section Break

[ ]

[]

Bacon and eggs.

You never know how much you miss something until you have it in your grasp once again- Or was it until it's gone?

Bah, it doesn't matter, the former still applies even if I'm wrong.

I had no idea how much I was missing this simple breakfast until now, a staple dish I'd had on the occasion and one that... reminded me of home.

Steering my thought s away from that...

Here's how I awoke.

I was sleeping, it was around six thirty in the morning (thankfully I felt rested enough at that point), the clock had said something around that time, and Maki had shaken me awake.

I was not happy with it, but I was eager to forgive when Maki explained why she had woken me up at such an hour.

Maki had woke me up with a plate, but not any ordinary food was on this plate, on it was _the most amazing meal to ever grace mankind_ (and one I thought might not have even survived the tests of time in this world, but was thankfully proven wrong), bacon, eggs, sausage, beans and an oh-so fluffy waffle.

So simple, yet so _delightful_.

Needless to say, I tore through the delicious meal- one that had to have been stolen from the gods themselves with how fucking great it was. With reckless abandon, I was ripping through crispy bacon with a knife in one hand and a fork in the other, dicing and slicing like a madman with an axe in a B-tier horror movie. My temporary carer seemed rather amused by my antics.

We talked during the heavenly feast, mostly about what exactly I was planning to do when I was better- I ended up giving her the brief outline of my plan. "Contact the Guardian's leader and bribe her with information" didn't sit well with Maki apparently, rather ironic considering what she'd done to me a few days ago was arguable a lot worse.

I put my dish, covered with the saucy remains of beans and dried egg yolk to the side when I was done a mere few minutes after starting, sighing happily as I patted my satiated stomach.

"I can't remember the last time I had bacon, or eggs!" I chuckled happily, giving Maki an appreciative thank you for the familiar and oddly comforting meal.

"I kind of guessed as much." she responded, arms crossed and a pleased smile on her face.

The mirth wasn't hidden, a good thing. I didn't hate Maki, she seemed like decent folk actually, so being at least on friendly terms with her would be nice.

"So, what are you going to do today?"

I was stuck here, which is a shame, but not much can really be done about it.

"Well," She spoke with a slightly annoyed tone as she furrowed her brow. "I _was_ going to the festival today, but instead I have to stay here and take care of you."

There was a piece within me that felt a bit bad for her, but the larger part that called for curiosity to rain supreme took over.

I asked her about this 'festival' she spoke of.

Apparently, today was a world memorial day for those lost in the maverick war (the lack of respect for those lost in previous wars, like world war one and two, did annoy me a little, even if it was understandable). The Elf Wars was one of the main things that was 'celebrated' (after all, that was roughly 60 to 80% of the population gone if my memory is still somewhat reliable and my 'wiki-walking' was correct). Maki continued on to explain to me that she was planning to go to a parade later on that day with a few friends of hers, but had to cancel to take care of me.

Even though I knew that wasn't really my fault, I still felt guilty knowing that I was part of the reason she had to stay.

"Couldn't you just... I don't know, leave me alone for a few hours?"

The face she sent my way was one of utter bewilderment and annoyance, as if I'd just said something so utterly stupid, so infantile, that the mere suggestion of it was a slight to her entire being.

I guess that's a no then.

"No. You're injured."

Makes sense I guess.

My mind wandered over to the coin-like thing I had found the other night. I checked the (what I believed to be) oaken table and stared at the golden bastard.

"Hey, Maki?" I queried after a moment of contemplation, still staring at the coin with a furrowed brow.

"Yes?" she asked back, her own brow raised in an arch.

I raised the golden coin I had found the previous night, passing it to her for an analysis.

"Do you know what this is?"

She seemed confused as she took the small coin from my grip, inspecting it through narrowed eyes.

"Can't say I've seen it before" she seemed perplexed, if her scrunched up face was anything to go by.

Then she turned it around to see its back and froze, face painted with shock.

"Is that...?" She brought it closer to her eyes as if to confirm her apparent suspicions.

I put my hand forward and asked for it back politely, she obliged, not even bothering to elaborate on what she'd said. Annoying, but I decided not to press her.

"I haven't ever seen anything like it, where'd you find it?"

"I woke up early morning today, found it on the table." I pointed to the metal table in question, right next to my bed.

"Well, it's yours. I haven't seen it before and I don't want it, so keep it. It looks nice, if nothing else."

I hummed as I flipped the coin around in my hands, mind churning out ideas on what it could be, what purposes it could have.

"I have to admit, the little 'picture' of me on the back has me a little worried." she uttered, a clear hint that had my eyes widening.

Right, what?

I turned the coin from the 'power button' side to the engraving I'd seen on the back and _looked_.

From there, the image suddenly clicked. That same set of bulky shoulder pads, the hand raised up, the gun on that hand...

It was her, Maki, in her armour from when she rescued me a few days ago!

"Well that's certainly strange."

"I concur."

I moved myself up the bed a bit, placing my back against the frame of the bed as I continued to observe the odd coin.

It was a slight twitch, the tiniest of mistakes and the lightest of accidents that answered the mystery for me.

My hand slipped over the power button, pressing it down impossibly. A bright flash of emerald-tinged light filled my vision and blinded me.

I couldn't hear anything for a few moments, all was silent and empty- my vision nought but white- then everything cleared, my vision and hearing returned.

...And then I was slapped, _hard_.

"Ow what-" I began, the sudden impact sending me off balance and tumbling off of the bed, a process I _only just_ managed to catch myself from.

I stopped for a moment as something registered- the second I heard my own, far more feminine, voice I knew on an intrinsic level that something was _wrong_ , oh-so very wrong.

It was looking at my own hand that sealed the deal.

My skin was now a dark shade of brown and clad in a mix of leather armour and metallic plating, a mesh of (probably) techno-organic and inorganic 'steel'.

No, it can't... what?

My mind halted all thought processes as I took in the lone hand, the small bits of flesh attached to 'me'.

I think I suffered a bluescreen of death or something similar, because the next thing I know I have an angry person shouting in my face and shaking my shoulders.

Maki gripped my shoulders and forced me to stare into her eyes. "Are you alright!?"

I stared at her, unable to voice anything but babbling incoherently as I stared into her two, dusty-red eyes.

She did not look happy, or angry, just... worried.

"What do you mean!" I eventually managed to weakly reply, unsure of what was going on and barely comprehending my current situation.

"You just... changed!" She almost whispered, removing her hands from me and just... staring.

I looked at my changed form, _properly_ looked.

Only then did it come to me that the armour looked suspiciously like hers when she came to my rescue yesterday.

Um... well, that wasn't good.

No, _that_ was a fucking understatement.

"I don't know!"

Wait... the coin?

Where did the coin go?

"I don't know what this is, but I'm pretty sure the coin did it?" I murmered at a voice very low in volume, so low I probably wouldn't have even been able to hear it without a microphone-

Oh.

Oh that is such _bullshit_.

Enhanced hearing... have the whole deal, apparently.

She backed away from me, putting a hand to her face and sighing in what might have been exasperation, but could easily have been a wide variety of anything else.

"This is fucking great... I don't know where the coin is." she said, visibly irritated and slightly panicked, her eyes wide. Almost viciously, she twirled around and began searching through the room, looking for a glint of green and gold.

I was now apparently Maki, and I was still sort of panicking, but I was getting better and less shaky.

"This is bullshi-" I was cut off by a soft green light that popped out of nowhere in front of Maki. She was instantly on guard and glaring at... _whatever_ it was.

I saw the glint of something in her hand, but it was gone before I could get a proper look at it.

Her gun perhaps? I doubt it, too small.

Odd.

Filing away that train of thought for later, I concentrated on the floating light, almost as if my glaring would burn a hole through the glow from its intensity.

Nothing of the sort happened.

Instead, after a few seconds of growing in size, the light condensed into the form of the coin from before, or at least I thought it was until the slowly spinning thing showed that the 'heads' side of the coin was engraved with something... different.

When it slowed enough I got to see what was on that side of the coin.

A silhouette of a... normal human male, no clothing or anything, like that one picture with the multiple-arms and a diagram.

It was me on that side of the coin, it had to be.

Maki slowly plucked the coin from the air and examined it, most of her panic all but vanishing at the sight of something new.

She still looked a little uneasy though.

"What did you do with the other coin?" her tone was inquisitive, but cold. Calculative.

I didn't like it one bit, so I answered her.

"I pressed down on the side with the power button."

"Well," she passed the coin to me. "Do it again."

Her voice... the sheer coldness of it was enough to frighten me, even with it obviously not being directed at me.

I took it gingerly, as if it would break in my small hands, then pressed down on the button.

The green flash never came, in fact, the button didn't even go inwards like it had before.

"No dice." I said decisively, continuing to try and press down on the button.

"What?" Her face lost its edge almost immediately, all the cold was gone and replaced with something I couldn't determine, something made me feel worse than the cold from before. she actually seemed worried by my reply, I can't blame her, I was as well.

"I can't press down on it."

"Give it here." he growled, her tone gave no room for compromise and her face showed how unlikely she was to accept any other option- not at all. She looked determined, very much so.

I gave it to her, she pushed at the 'tails' side of the coin.

Instead of a green flash, a set of floating numbers, a shade of green reminiscent of a cabbage, were projected above the coin.

The numbers were 3:52- and it was counting down by the second.

"What the fuck...?" Maki and I said in unison, same voices clashing. Both of us shivered. This was unpleasant.

"Well, I guess that's a time limit?"

My question went unanswered, it was obvious what the answer was after all.

I craned my neck to look at the machine I was hooked up to for the better half of the week.

The wires (are they called wires? bah) were scattered on the floor and leaking.

"Ummmm... Maki?" I asked hesitantly.

She turned to me "Yeah-...oh." she saw the leaking fluid, sighed, and started picking up the discarded 'wires' that had been sustaining me for the past few days.

I got off of my lazy ass and helped out, or tried to at least, she'd shushed me off and had me sit back on the bed as she picked up the last of the wires and strapped them to the sack of watery-stuff so as to prevent further spillages.

The floor had a puddle of the liquid that had been within.

I sat there, trying to ignore the strange feelings of this alien body- of the heightened awareness, of the lack of something between my legs, of _everything_ as I looked at the body I now inhabited.

 _Wrong_.

She was definitely a little shorter than I was, that I could just feel. My- her- what even would be the correct term? Nevermind, _my_ hair was short and a cyan blue. _My_ body was clad in armour that was surprisingly comfortable, more comfortably than seemed possible.

I was pretty sure that it wasn't actually this light, maybe something to do with the transformation?

Probably super science, fucking hypertech man.

We sat in silence for the better half of two minutes, just leaving each other to our own thoughts a listening to the familiar and almost comforting hum of electricity in the background- now even louder than before.

"Hey Jack?" Maki asked with a sigh, cutting through the wall of silence that we had built.

"Yeah?" I replied swiftly, trying to continue ignoring the strange new form I was in.

"Timer's out." she pointed to the holographic numbers, they simply showed '0:00' before collapsing in a burst of radiant green.

Well, let's hope this works.

"What are you waiting for?" I asked "Press it!"

She did so, and then I was consumed with that same, all-consuming nothing for a few moments, then the light faded and I was _me_ again.

"Ok then, that was... something" I felt woozy, placing a hand to my forehead as nausea hit me.

'I feel like shit and my brain's numb.' I cursed to myself as my head slowly started to stop aching like it was stuffed with tissues.

"Are you ok?" Maki asked me, guiding me back onto the bed.

She's a good friend. I don't even know her that well, but it just feels... _right_ to call her that.

I've had friends before, sure, but I was rarely the one to make them- the only exceptions to that rule were friends-of-friends.

"Fine, just a headache."

She was silent for a moment, then she spoke.

"I don't think you need to go back on the saline." she seemed hesitant as she looked at me, frowning.

After my head felt fine again, I responded with "I feel fine now, like I can actually move."

She put a hand to her chin and hummed in thought.

"Well... I can't exactly leave you here, and you might still be injured... Do you want to go to the festival?"

I registered on some level that what she'd just said made little to no sense, but at the same time I found the idea brought a smile to my face.

"You know... I think I'd like that." I smiled at her, feeling just a little exhausted from the events of the morning.

So... exhausting.

...And there's a problem.

"I need new clothes..." I uttered to myself quietly, looking down at the same shirt I'd been wearing when I came to this world.

I turned to Maki and repeated myself.

"Maki, I need new clothes."

She gave me a look of mock disgust over her shoulder. "Yeah, you do," she seemed irritated about that 'fact'. "You aren't exactly wearing anything great right now. The 'old world' either had terrible fashion sense, or you do."

My eye twitched at the comment.

She was calling _my world_ the one without a fashion sense?

People here had rainbow-coloured tutus and hair that could fill in for any colour of the spectrum, which, according to the woman herself, was all created 'naturally'!

Well, for her it'd be natural, sure, but it sure as hell ain't natural... at least by my standards, or Earth's.

"No, I mean I need new, clean clothes. And there is nothing wrong with my current clothes! You people as a whole just have no sense of sensibility!" I half-chuckled half-growled, so obviously joking you couldn't make it any more obvious unless you gave me a red nose and the costume to go.

"Oh really? Whose time are we in, and who does that make right?" she asked with her arms crossed and a smirk on her face.

"Um... Hm." I couldn't think of a retort. I felt my face heat up from embarrassment- it was stupid logic, but I couldn't really refute it.

"Shut up..." I grumbled under my breath.

"Nope." she chirped back cheerily, face the epitome of 'smug'.

Fucking _sadist_.

I sighed.

"When are we going to leave?"

"I'll have to come up with an explanation for my friends on why I changed my mind," She then turned to me, I could see the mischief in her eyes.

"And why I'm bringing a 'friend' with me." She chuckled a little, leaving me confused as she left the room with a confident-looking stride.

So I guess I knew what I was doing for the day, I'll go see the Guardians tomorrow. It makes the most sense, after all, to plan this sort of thing.

A light green glow popped up in my face, startling me.

"Oh fuck!"

I promptly began feeling like an idiot after scuttling away from the sudden glow at speeds I didn't know I was able to make- odd stuff.

The light condensed into a _very_ familiar coin. I got myself gently onto my feet and, after getting use of my legs back, I carefully came over to poke the thing just to be sure. I ended up picking it up and placing it in my pocket.

The coin's effects could be very useful to me later on, for various reasons. Havng actual weaponry and armour is better than not, after all.

Maki opened the door and popped her head in "Hey, you alright? I heard screaming, thought I should check just to be sure you weren't being melodramatic."

She did seem concerned, less than before thankfully. I told her what had happened.

"The coin reappeared, I think I'll be keeping it on me."

I flipped the golden thing out of my pocket and flung it into the air, catching it in my open hand- making sure it hit my palm flat to prevent the button from being pressed again.

She stared at it for a moment with a frown "Alright, just don't use it without telling me, I'm apparently the only one who can turn you back if this little... 'test' we've had proves anything."

This was probably true. I put it back in my pocket and followed her out the metal door.

This place really went all Sci Fi- you couldn't have a normal door with a knob and a handle, no that'd be too mundane, instead have a high-tech sliding door that removes less than one percent of the effort in your day when you open a fucking door at probably fifteen times the fucking cost.

Moving on from that particular minefield of thoughts, I looked around as we went to... outside? Maybe? I don't know.

The hallways were strangely clean, sterile like a hospital but without the smell, it was really bothering me for some reason and I don't know why.

"So, they know you're coming with, and I can't let you go to town in..." she roughly motioned towards my current attire- blue jeans and a white t-shirt. "That, so we're going shopping!"

She grinned at me as she giggled and jumped on the spot like a child that had just discovered the unholy lovechild of sugar and cocaine, I was reminded of a less lazy Cheshire cat from Alice in Wonderland- no specific incarnations of it, though.

"Oh please god no." I whimpered towards her in a plea for mercy, begging for her to stop the crazy train before it began.

I _knew_ this kind of crazy, it was crazy I wanted nothing to do with.

It was the insanity of a mother, a sister or a friend who is taking you through the _entire_ store whether you like it or not! Also, carry these bags, all of them even though they probably weigh fifteen times your body weight! I don't want to hear no back chatter either!

A shiver went down and up my spine just thinking about it.

It was not a pleasant feeling.

"Oh yes! We are going to get you something much more presentable and you are going to like it!" her words scared me, and that wasn't easy to do.

...Well, that would be a lie, but still.

"Why? I finally get out of confinement and now this? Why do you hate me?" I asked, preemptively tired and .

"I don't hate you," She chided with her shit eating grin only growing wider with every word "I'm just not taking you to the festival with your shitty looking old clothes!" She chortled at me.

 _Bitch_!

"You know what? I ain't even mad, just disappointed."

My greatest of words had... no effect.

"Aw, don't be so _sour_." My new friend began, descending into a fit of giggling soon after.

"Who the fuck even says that?! That saying was out of date in my time!" I huffed.

Or at least I think it was, when I get back I'll have to check on that.

She just shook her head at me, smiling her impish smile.

"Anyway, we need to get going, so, let's go!"

I can tell I'm not going to like this.

Not even a little.

[]

[ ]

[ ] Section Break

[ ]

[]

I had underestimated her, my mother had given me experience with clothes shopping... but this was just _ridiculous_!

We had been searching through stores from ten in the morning till six in the afternoon, and now we were just sitting in a local cafe named Tabitha's cakes (named after the girl who ran it, she didn't work 'the front' though), Maki was drinking some coffee and eating a blueberry muffin while I had tea and a few rich tea biscuits.

Insert joke about the British and their tea here.

A piece of me had died inside when I realised I wouldn't actually be able to pay for anything, but Maki was apparently someone who considered however many E-Crystals she needed to be chump change, paying for the food and clothing she'd personally picked out for me.

I hate her, but love her at the some time. A complicated affair, I'm sure you understand.

"So when does the festival start?" I asked curiously, unsure of what to do- drink, or dunk?

"At around half eight" Maki replied as she nibbled at her muffin, a content smile on her face.

I dipped a biscuit in my tea when I came to a decision, nodding at Maki's words. Swirling it around for a bit, I eventually tore the biscuit from the tea, then consumed the now tea-enriched biscuit. I was enjoying that fucking biscuit for all it was worth, no one would be stopping me!

"So... we have two hours... what are we going to do?" I asked my companion after a sigh of happiness. The biscuit was... nice.

"Well... I could introduce you to my friends beforehand?" she asked, shrugging her shoulders.

There was a glint in her eye. I wasn't sure how to feel.

"Eh, why not?" I said more than asked.

Before long, we had both finished our respective 'meals'. It was... nice.

I finished my tea and slowly got out of my seat. I placed the cup on the tray we were given and, after Maki had placed the wrapper for her finished muffin and her cup on the tray, walked into the shop to drop it off.

After giving my thanks to the man at the till, I walked out, humming random tones that came to mind.

I found myself thinking about my life as we walked through the crowded streets of Innerpeace. The air was clean and the sky was mostly cloudless and blue. It was a nice day to be outside.

And of course, like all good things, it had to be ruined.

We were walking, minding our own business with Maki pointing out all the various shops to me, and then a wall _exploded_. It was solid one moment, the next it was pushed outwards, the entire metallic wall pushed open like a bullet-hole through a flak jacket or a finger through paper- broken.

Thankfully no one was hurt in those first few moments... It was what came after that caused hell on Earth, the death of many and a surprisingly high amount of injuries that _could_ have been deaths.

Out of the dust of what had once been a wall came a trio of Galleons and a single, lone hopper- all embedded with almost signature glowing red visors and crystalline things on their bodies.

'Mavericks', they were called by many.

Everyone who wasn't too shocked to move had started to run away, screaming erupted.

I, sadly, wasn't one of them.

I stared at the gathered Galleons and single Hopper, rage colouring my vision with an unnatural tint.

These insignificant little _piss rats_ had the nerve to come here?

I was filled with a seething rage, unnatural and oppressive. I did something I don't think I would have done without that rage clouding my judgement.

I took the coin from my pocket, and pressed it.

I was surrounded in nothing.

Then the battle begun.


	5. Chapter 5

It was an instinctual reaction. I was trapped in the moment in a way I can't quite describe- one moment I was me, the next I was suddenly armed and armoured, a weapon at my hip and something akin to muscle memory telling me the motions to do what I wanted.

 _Shoot the bastards and bring em' hell._

With an uncannily quick motion, I tore the whitish-grey pistol away from my hip- not questioning where it came from. I raised the weapon in a two-handed grip, pointing its end- a maw gaping with the light of a pink-purple glow towards my enemies.

The weapon barked an almost cartoonish 'pew pew pew' as I pulled the familiar-yet-alien trigger, a trio of yellow 'pellets' flying forth at the tall purple mechanaloids.

One went wide and hit undamaged wall, staining it black in the process. Two slammed against the head and chest of the leftmost Galleon, the first dispelled by a white flare that surrounded the autonmous machine's head moments before the second then hit, melting away its visor and 'dropping' it.

Before it had even hit the ground, the purple machine's torso exploded outwards for reasons unknown.

The other two Galleons and Hopper had already figured out where the firing had come from, the former starting to raise their arm cannons and the latter leaping forward.

Two more pulls of the trigger, six pellets flew with the accompanying 'pew pew pew' of the gun's discharge and 'hiss' of the actual projectile's as they flew.

The Hopper leaped forward at just the wrong moment, getting clipped by a single rogue pellet which harmlessly evaporated across a white flare on its surface. The other three yellow bolts shrieked as they slammed into the torso of one Galleon, leaving last Galleon alive as its partner collapsed and exploded all in the space of a heartbeat, hitting the ground as a collection of melted components and twisted purple fragments.

A few seconds passed, two Galleon's felled and the lone survivor of the barrage finally having brought up their cannon, aiming its own circular 'firing chamber' at me and discharging its own bolts. Larger and just as fast in a burst of three.

They flew with the same hiss that my own weapons had- and were maybe slightly slower. In my state as I was, unnaturally angry and focused, I reacted by... not reacting, instead reloading my weapon with a 'clip' of sorts hugging my hip.

I lowered my head _just_ in time to keep my eyes and face out of the immediate line of fire.

Metal met plasma and the latter lost _horrifically_. The plating covering my shoulder and torso became distorted and warped as the plasma-like energy sizzled and burst against them, evaporating into a violent hiss. It didn't grab my attention other than noting my left 'pauldron' and torso armour now had three large holes bored in them, not going through but disturbing the very material that made them up.

I finished reloading my weapon and fired again, noticing that the number of Galleon's had went from one to six.

I realised something rather horrid.

I had fucked up, I had done _fucked up royally_ with my actions. Sure, I had killed three and lost parts of my body armour as sacrifice (which registered as a worthy trade... somehow), but there was now more than twice as many of them as before.

Because _of fucking course_ there would be more.

"Oh _shit_." Came my less than eloquent response, stressed about as much as a felt.

The great anger that had been pushing me forward suddenly collapsed, faded, I'm not sure which, but it gave way to fear as I realised just how _fucked_ I was and how stupid I had been in trying to get into combat with nothing more than a fucking pea shooter and armour plating.

I knew it wouldn't help, but I turned round and began pounding into the street with metal boots, fleeing like the hounds of hell were on to me. On some unconscious level through the mindless panic, I was searching for cover as another volley of plasma came at me again.

And the sound of a man-sized grenade on a spring. _That_ terrifying thing too.

I was unable to evade what I couldn't see, the searing hot energy collided against my back, going through the thin armour protecting it and burning straight through until the dispersed heat melted against my fleshy interior beneath the slag that had once served as armor.

Blood evaporated, flesh cooked and the metal armour around the wound only served to spread that agonising, molten heat further up what little of my back I could feel as it conducted that heat and burned against my skin.

I could do nothing but shriek in unadulterated _agony_ at the horrific sensation of flesh being peeled away by the intense heat. I was unable to properly think about anything. I fell to the unforgiving pavement face first, both me and the nerves that were still left in my back crying in agony as the skin of my cheek scraped against cold pavement in.

My cheek would have stung if I had the mind to pay attention to it.

It was a pain I cannot describe, a pain that struck the mind, perhaps more so than the flesh.

I couldn't move even a little, only lay on the ground and cry, praying to anything that might be listening, hoping for assistance from something or someone as the world started to melt away.

The last thing I heard before the world went silent was water boiling from somewhere behind me, the characteristic sound of multiple pellets of plasma hissing over my head, an ear-shattering explosion and words. Indecipherable words.

The last thing I smelt was the sickening scent of burnt, boiling flesh and ozone.

The last thing I felt was pain across my back and an almost calm numbness in my head, as if I was trying to think through a blockage of cotton.

The last thing I tasted was iron filling my mouth, blood. My blood.

The last thing I saw was an orange shape coming from the air, dropping towards me- then a flash of white.

The last thing I thought... was a cry for help.

No one answered.

[]

[ ]

[ ] Section Break

[ ]

[]

I awoke a coughing heavily, phantom burns running across my back and a scream trapped in my throat- stopped only by my coughing.

Rearing forward, feeling nauseous and sick, I tried to find reason in the chaos of my thoughts- but was denied such solace by an acidic tang at the back of my throat. Before I even knew what I was doing, where I was or had gathered my thoughts to figure out why I was still alive, bile and vomit forced forced itself from my mouth and tears from my eyes. Thoughts of _that smell_ filling me.

It was... _horrible_.

By the time I had finally finished and recovered enough of myself to wipe off my hand on what I faintly recognised as grass- I was able to think with some measure of clarity. The ground was covered in something smooth, a lot of them.

I was shaking, but even so I was able to pull one of the many green something's up for inspection.

Leaves, that's what they were.

At the back of my mind I barely registered the smell around me, the smell of _nature_.

You know the one, leaves and grass and all that shit- you can smell it all when you go into a place where mother nature still holds her vine-like grip and industry hasn't begun to stamp it out. Forests, that sort of thing.

Coincidentally, I happened to be in a forest- one dense with the distant sounds of swaying branches and distinctive clicks of insects.

My mind was still clouded, but ever so slowly clearing. Once I was in a more stable mindset, I was able to start contemplating and puzzling out a timeline of events in my head.

Cafe, walking with Maki, Mechanaloids attack, I used the coin... and then I died.

 _I cooked in my armour, my flesh boiled, the smell- Oh God_.

I died...

And Maki probably got to watch it all. Maybe those words I'd heard were hers?

That... that wasn't fair. _That's not fair_.

Armoured fists clenched, I it the earth- pushing my weight into every solid punch and tearing up small bits of earth as I did.

 _Life's not fair Jack._

It wasn't until I felt out of breath that I finally relented, letting my hand softly lay on the disturbed dirt.

I felt beaten, a coldness in my chest.

"Why?" I asked myself quietly, trying to comprehend my idiocy. Trying to find a way to make it not my fault.

But no matter how I looked at it, _I_ had pressed that button with the intent on fighting. _I_ ran into combat like a fool and _I_ was the one to get myself killed.

It was irrational, I knew it was. I'd known her for... a little more than a week. She wouldn't care that much, probably. Sure, she'd be sad, but it wouldn't be like...

 _Like with dad_.

That didn't help it hurt any less, though.

"Why am I... Where am I?" I stalled, teary-eyed and diverting my attention to the surrounding forest.

'Don't think about it, observe the surrounding area, distract yourself' my mind supplied. It was something I could agree to in this mad, unfair world.

I did as I was telling myself, confusing sentence, but accurate, and began moving.

Wherever I was now, it was definitely not in the world I'd been in before- the lack of cyborg trees or general mechanical-organic substitutes in the surrounding flora was evidence enough to tell me that.

My body was stiff in its movements, impeded by the armour around me. I felt that even if I didn't have the armor still on-

I still have the armor on.

That raises the question... can I take it off?

A quick check on myself showed that I was, in fact, covered in pristine leather covered with metal plate. Spotless, undamaged, and on my hip was that same fucking laser pistol.

My skin was also still the same shade as hers. A problem, because that meant _I wasn't me_.

 _Fuck_.

Stuck in the middle of nowhere in a likely foreign land and trapped in a foreign body, that's just... _fucking fantastic_!

In an effort to calm my fraying nerves, I took my own advice once again and focused on my surroundings- on figuring out the where of the now instead of contemplating the _why_ of the past.

I started with the trees, because even if my knowledge on them was limited to 'looks like its from the forests near home' and 'looks tropical and/or not like the trees from around home', it was better than nothing.

The trees were 'normal', like what you could find pretty much anywhere in the countryside that could support them. The medium bulk of the wooden giants were tall and covered in leaves, many a different shade of green that brightened the world by simply existing, as if the leaves were radiating happiness itself. The gaps in the treeline that let the sun shine through made the forest look like your typical fairy tale forest, bright and colorful, almost mysterious and fantastical.

"So," I began, voice as feminine as it was deepening to something sounding almost boyish- a _young_ boy, if anything.

"Where the fuck am I now?"

My only response was the wind, which had been silent thus far, beginning to pick up a little, as if answering my question.

With nothing.

After that, I chose a random direction and began walking. During my walk I was making sure to look for any recognisable local fauna that might give me an idea of where I was- I could be home, or I might be... somewhere else.

Considering the little information I had on both my location and the situation I was in, things _could_ have ended very badly, and honestly they probably should have.

I'm so glad that despite that they didn't.

But even then, the events that would come to transpire would eventually come to bite me later.

They'd bite me in a way I'd never have been able to predict.

[]

[ ]

[ ] Section Break

[ ]

[]

Five minutes. Less than that.

Less than five minutes and I'd already found something that rather cleanly and definitively told me what new place I'd been sent to- because of course I'd been sent somewhere new. This was certainly something unexpected that has left me rather awed and unsure of what to do next.

While strolling through the forest, I'd heard something... _odd_. It was a light and tinny sound, a 'call' from an animal was my first guess- and I was _sort of correct_.

Though, frankly, I'd been walking in silence for long enough to start thinking. With that time, I'd realised that my lack of knowledge could mean anything lived in this forest, dangerous or otherwise. This meant that when I heard the small thing squeak from close to three meters behind me, the laser pistol was aimed at it without a second thought.

...And what greeted me, staring peacefully at me over the 'barrel' (or, the closest equivalent to such) of my weapon were two, small black pupils on a yellowish face attached to a small, green body with a closed plant at its top- a 'bud'.

I felt ashamed, pointing a gun at what I saw before me, as it looked at me with those small, black eyes.

Frankly, pointing your gun away from a magical thinking plant with legs and superpowers is probably not the smartest thing to do, but I couldn't bring myself to point a _gun_ at that precious little thing.

Kneeling down on my knees and placing my laser pistol back on my hip, I stared at the tiny little green 'animal' with cute, little yellow legs and slit-like eyes the color of a void.

The Budew squeaked at me as if in response to my staring. This wasn't something I was expecting, but it at least gave me a good idea of where I was: Sinnoh (probably), in a forest (no shit Sherlock), the world itself being, obviously, Pokemon.

A world in which children get given animals with superpowers so they can go and beat up other non-domesticated animals with superpowers to make their domestic animals stronger. Sometimes they would catch said wild animals in a Pokeball- a device that does something allowing it to contain creatures ridiculously large and ridiculously small.

No idea how that works, might be interesting to find out if I can figure out the technobabble that would inevitably be involved with it.

In addition to the superpowers these 'natives' held, the animals could become stronger through battling. When one of the animals gains enough 'strength', they turn into something else in a process called 'evolution'.

Never understood the naming of that, even as a kid.

Metamorphosis is the proper term- I remember looking it up once when I was younger because I was curious. It was around the same time I started learning about evolution in science classes.

Home...

Anyway, back to the thinking plant monster.

Budew is a grass type Pokemon- one that isn't very strong and, as far as I can remember from experience dating a couple of years back, only attack by using Absorb, a move that absorbs some equivalent to life energy, presumably.

When they 'Evolve' they become a humanoid figure made of plants called 'Roselia'- at that stage they learn how to poison things, I think.

I put out a hand towards the cute little bugger, waiting for it to either start running, attack me or come closer.

Treating a very intelligent plant thing like a cat was probably not the smartest thing to do in hindsight, much like removing it from the gun's sight, but two things swayed my mind to irrational territory: it was cute and I'm a sucker for cute things.

Thankfully, my stupidity didn't get me killed.

When the little bud Pokemon waddled up to me I felt a smile on my lips, it was so cute! I took my hand and stroked its side, unable to help the grin that had covered my face. I couldn't feel its skin through my glove, but the thought is what counts I guess.

If the thing about cute things giving people diabetes was true, over three quarters of me would just be pure, concentrated diabetes in that moment.

That's not how diabetes works, I know but I don't care, as long as my point is understood it doesn't matter.

It was cute, and I was _enamored_ by it.

For God-knows how long I continued to stroke the small bulb, my smile growing even wider with every passing second until my face actually started to strain a little.

Pokemon! P-o-k-e-m-o-n, Pokemon! Out of all the places I could have been sent to, the _horrible_ places that would eat me up and spit me back out I had been sent here!

Luck, I believe, has struck me!

I found that I couldn't stop stroking the cute little bastard, but not just from how cute it was, but also because I wanted to be sure it was real and that I wasn't just stroking some horrific illusion beast that would eat me the first chance it gets.

Eventually, I did manage to take one of my gloves and start stroking it with skin-to-skin contact- which seemed to please the small bud-Pokemon.

The green-surface of the small creature was velvety and soft, smooth and cool to the touch- like, funnily enough, a plant.

Maybe it was a newly born and that's why its skin was so soft? I wouldn't know, I'm not a Pokemon professor.

After what was probably a few minutes of just stroking, I picked it up without any resistance on its part and, while holding the small and incredibly huggable creature in my arms, began walking again.

I never even noticed that the little thing had fallen asleep, I was too busy stroking it with my right hand while it nestled in the crook of my left.

[]

[ ]

[ ] Section Break

[ ]

[]

My walk through the forest had seemingly gotten me nowhere. I had been walking for the better half of what felt like an hour and had found throughout the forest: a few groups of Wurmple sticking to trees, others hanging from trees or spitting silk everywhere so they could lay _in_ trees, many 'packs' of Bidoof rolling around in grass, gnawing on trees and doing beaver-y things other than making dams, a Kricketot practicing it's singing and a Cascoon (an evolution of the pink worm Wurmple that is completely immobile) that just glared at the world with a burning gleam in its eye that spoke of great pain and torment for anyone who would come near it. At one point I even saw a Cherrim, a dark pink thing with two purple petals covering its top, hanging from a tree.

Although this did mostly confirm that I was, in fact, in Sinnoh, it didn't help me find civilisation and walking in one direction didn't seem to be getting me anywhere.

It probably _would_ get me somewhere given time, but I was pretty fucked unless that time happened to be soon.

I looked down at the snoring, green ball of sentient and (likely) sapient plant matter. I couldn't help but smile at the image it presented.

As I continued to walk, the little plant started to stir a little in my arms.

Once I was sure the Budew was actually waking up, I set down on the leave-laden forest floor and placed the Pokemon on my lap, like a cat. I was waiting for it to fully wake up as I lightly stroked the bulb on it's head.

The Budew yawned, nearly making me 'daw' on principle, I resisted the urge as much as I could (I couldn't, for the body is weak even if the mind is willing) and watched as the bud Pokemon 'rolled' off my lap, rolling into a standing position before performing a little dance on its stubby two legs that made me 'daw' at twice the volume I had done previously.

It was just... too _innocent_.

The Budew turned to me, almost expectantly. I blinked at it for a moment then started petting it, smiling all the way.

After a while the content little plant squeaked at me, bouncing on the spot like a chipmunk on five pounds of sugar.

One that hadn't died from an overdose, anyway.

Bouncing on its own meant nothing to me, it was when it started squeaking at me and bouncing tat I realised it was trying to communicate. That alone was... oddly soothing.

A thinking plant, and I'd befriended one. It was also trying to speak with me.

"Do you want me to follow you?"

It was a shot in the dark, but the corresponding squeak of approval and 'bow' of its entire upper body, a full-body nod, told me everything I needed to know.

It whirled around and marched into the forest, going... _somewhere_.

The small plant didn't seem malicious, so I had no reason to think they were steering me wrong- that and their appearance was too cutesy for me to apply a label of 'evil' too.

So, with a small smile, I followed.

[]

[ ]

[ ] Section Break

[ ]

[]

It turns out that the cute little Budew was just hungry, and so was I when I saw what it brought us to.

The Pokemon had led me to a little opening in the treeline that was filled with waist-high grass and various bushes containing assortments of 'fruit' or, in this case, 'berries'.

I was quick to go towards them, my stomach mostly the reason why as it grumbled away- reminding me for a moment of Maki- before I quickly steered those sour thoughts out of my head, or at least tried.

The only thing that succeeded in distracting me was the food.

With an unnamed Budew following me, I moved towards the bushes and got on my knees.

My armour came with, while not pockets, 'storage' areas. What would normally have been used to contain munitions was instead used to carry an assortment of berries- Oran and Pecha, blue and pink, as well as two large raspberries with orange and purple colouring and a purple 'cone' berry, none of which I recognised.

I passed two Oran berries to the Budew, letting it eat them as I nibbled on the pink flesh of a Pecha berry. I figured that, if the plant-monster-thing could eat it, I could too right? I'd heard the same with monkeys was true.

 _Very_ imperfect logic, mostly fueled by hunger and a desire to just eat (the knowledge that Pecha berries apparently worked as a cure-all remedy for poisons helped), but it thankfully didn't come back to bite me.

While yes, I _could_ eat it and it was rather sweet, it wasn't very filling. It was a lot more filling than it had any right to be, yes, but when compared to other berries I would eat later, it was like eating an apple instead of a small, savoury apple pie- one is just bigger than the other and a bit 'richer'.

I chewed on the soft and sweet berry, savouring its sweetness.

Soon after I'd plucked an Oran berry from the bush and tore into it, finding it to be more favourable than the Pecha berry from seconds before and much more appetising. Even though it was about the size of a kiwi fruit, after eating it and letting it settle- I'd felt... much less hungry than I probably should have.

As I ate into the flesh of the Oran berry, I thought about it and realised that by what he understood from earth standards. In the world of Pokemon, what they called a berry was like a fruit than what I know of 'berries'- most of them where at the size of an orange or larger, _definitely_ not as small as a blackberry or anything like that.

After we had both scoffed down our berries, the idea came to me to actually try partnering up with the Pokemon on a more 'official' basis- and since it was clearly sapient, or at least able to understand English, that came in the form of a simple question.

"So, would you like to be my partner?"

The earthy smell of the forest, the chirping of birds and the clicking of insects were all I could hear. I felt... tense, paranoia making me expect a refusal.

I put an eye on the Budew.

It tilted its body, like a head. I'm pretty sure if the little bugger tilted even an inch to the left, it would have fallen over.

Diabetes levels rising to 'enough to down an African elephant' from 'instantly lethal'.

With a smooth motion, the green walking plant righted itself and squeaked, jumping with a smile, stopping to apparently 'catch its breath' (why would a plant need to do that? don't they produce oxygen instead of breathing it?) and then nodding. A good answer.

"What even are you?" I asked the little plant- much to their confusion judging by the tilted head. It was about then that an idea came to mind.

I held out my hands, one still 'gauntleted' and the other naked to the world- leaving an unfamiliar skin tone open to the air, exposing flesh and skin that I knew to not be my own. I hadn't become more... 'used to it' with the short time I had. I didn't like the change, it was _wrong_ to not be me when I looked at myself, but I could ignore it for now.

A little discomfort meant nothing when my first goal should be finding civilisation- survival.

"Left for boy, right for girl." I emphasised which was which by shaking the each hand when it was mentioned, just to be safe. They'd understood my words so far, but, well...

I wasn't going to fully trust the vocabulary of a magical plant monster.

After a moment of blinking at me like a dazed fish, the unnamed Pokemon calmly waddled up to my right hand and squeaked. After a moment of bemused staring, I watched it drop its head into my armoured palm- nuzzling against the metal.

I guess that's the best answer I'm going to get.

Alright, so a name for a female Budew... It didn't need to be something unique, just something that would fit and wasn't too long.

'VORUMAN' or some other string of letters that when written down have to act like an idiot with caps lock was hardly going to cut it for a real living creature, let alone an ally.

"How about Blossom for a name? You like that one?"

I don't actually know if the Pokemon wants to be a friend- only that she wants to be 'partners' (which could be an oath of fealty or a temporary truce), but it seemed like a good idea to at least have a name to call her by.

The Pokemon seemed to mull over the name over in its head, then nodded, using its whole body for the notion, making for a rather funny visual.

And one that was even more diabetes inducing.

"Alright, Blossom it is!" I exclaimed, unable to stop myself from smiling as the cute little Pokemon danced in celebration- tapping its tiny feet and chirping and squeaking contently.

I wonder if there was some context I was missing? Like, naming Pokemon being a big thing or something. I wouldn't be surprised if that was or wasn't the case, both seem pretty likely.

Shrugging, I ignored the thought and instead put my focus on other things.

I gave the tiny little bud Pokemon a stroke and, standing up with another berry in hand, began marching out of the berry filled mini-forest of green bushes with Blossom by my side, humming something thats name was on the tip of my tongue, yet just out of my minds reach.

I felt like today was going to be a _good_ day.

I then promptly realised I had just provoked Murphy and I was probably going to _not_ have a good day.

God damn it me.

[]

[ ]

[ ] Section Break

[ ]

[]

It's a good thing for Murphy he doesn't have to enforce his law personally- after all, if he did, I would have decked him by now.

Blossom and I had been walking, minding our own business, then suddenly a Dustox flies in out of nowhere and starts harassing us (mostly Blossom) with bursts of light-purple 'stuff' resembling the reverberations of water on the surface of a pond. These 'waves' thrown in our direction- something I can only assume is confusion spam.

Its body was a deep purple colour with an egg-like shape to it. On its torso where four small, thin but rounded red legs tucked against its belly, beside those two rather majestic looking green wings- thicker than a small book and large- making up the large majority of its width and height with the emerald semicircle it made going around the insect-Pokemon's back- dotted with red circles that probably made it look more like a different, more imposing beast to other Pokemon.

The strangest part of the experience was watching the waves of purple it was spewing out from its two yellow antennae hit me and... break around me, doing nothing but lapping against my 'armour' like water before dissipating into the air.

I was seemingly unaffected by said confusion spam, or just not the one being targeted, but Blossom was not so lucky- I would have asked her to attack the bastard the moment I'd noticed the purple waves flowing through the air itself, but she was a step ahead of me and was already doing something about it before I'd even began opening my mouth.

Blossom turned to the Dustox, made an indignant sound resembling a grumble, then began glowing with a small yellow light- moments later weird greenish-yellow particles began to leak out of the purple and green insect, all being pulled by unseen forces towards the small green Pokemon.

Within seconds of exposure the Dustox fell to the ground with a dull 'thump', squirming on the floor as its wings weakly tried to flap it back into the air with limited success.

Blossom turned to me and did a strange little dance of victory that froze my mind.

 _Too cute_.

I smiled at her, giving her a light pat on the bud on top of her face. After spoiling my apparent companion even more, I took a moment to observe the squirming Dustox as it writhed weakly in the grass, soundless with the exception of the weak continuous 'fwoosh's of its attempts at taking to the skies once again.

For a move like Absorb, or at least I'm pretty sure it was Absorb- it couldn't really be anything else, to knock out such a foe of its typing in one hit meant one of two things.

A) The bug/flying type had already been attacked by something and was weak from it- so weak that the Absorb was able to ground it after one use despite it being both Flying and Bug- both of which are 'strong' against Grass type move.

Or B), Blossom was just a lot stronger than the Dustox. Strong enough to make the difference irrelevant.

I couldn't bare looking at the pretty much crippled Pokemon before me so, because I'm a _fucking_ idiot, I took a single Oran berry from my pocket, much to Blossom's dismay if her rapid squeaking was anything to go by, and placed it next to the Dustox's mouth.

Without any hesitation the moth Pokemon snapped its head forward and grasped the berry with what could have been teeth or anything- it was too quick to see what it used to grasp the berry from my grip. It was stuck there as it rolled over, using motions I would associate with a Jurassic Park velociraptor to send the berry down its gullet in as many tiny pieces as possible.

Then, after a moment of apparent recuperation, a light seemed to shine in its yellow eyes as it flapped once, _hard_ \- taking flight and throwing up a purple dust that flew into my eyes- all because of it flapping its green wings.

I was instantly backing away from where it had been, covering my eyes with my hands as the dust sunk into them- stinging and forcing my eyes to water.

"For fucks sake!" I roared as I tripped over a rock, bashing my head against a tree.

The world span for a moment, then focused a little, second after second bringing my vision slightly closer to clear as the squeaks of Blossom hit me.

"Hit the fucking thing again, it clearly doesn't appreciate good will!" I hissed as I rubbed my sore and (incredibly likely) poisoned eyes.

I heard a puff from something and a dull thump, then mostly silence (excluding normal forest chatter).

I sat calmly while quietly cursing, my eyes were likely some form of reddening, and along with it I had suddenly developed a runny nose and a bad cough.

After a while Blossom rubbed up against my side, her squeaking had died down a little, but it was still there every so often.

She was worried, I think.

I took one hand and felt for her blindly, found her, then picked her up to place her on my lap and stroke. My eyes had begun to stop feeling sore rather quickly- the cough and runny nose weren't so eager to fade though.

"I'll be fine... just going to rest" I told her as my mind faded and the world swirled into blackness.

I made one last, weak attempt at coughing before I was claimed by sleep.

[]

[ ]

[ ] Section Break

[ ]

[]

I awoke in the lighter hours of night with Blossom snoring soundly on my lap and feeling a lot better than when I had when I had slept however long ago.

The stinging in my eyes had completely vanished, the runny nose and cough were gone... odd, but I didn't question it.

I picked up Blossom gently, so to not disturb her from her slumber, and held her in the crook of one of my arms, stroking her with the other as I continued walking forward.

Hopefully we'd find civilisation soon, cause' right now I need a shower, hygiene is important you know?

Anyway, I continued walking through the woods, hooting could be heard both near and far. My only source of light in the night was the pale moon, the light of which shone through the branches and painted everything with a silver tint. The Eterna Forest looked Beautiful at night.

I loved the night (I've always been a bit of a night owl, even if I never really get the chance to walk about these days) but this view raised a good question. It was one I couldn't answer.

For all my life, I was never able to _appreciate_ sights like this. Nature and the beauty of large structures... it was just something I had never enjoyed. I couldn't see the beauty in nature, I'm not sure why. My family often told me about it- my mother used to take me to the docks in my hometown to watch the sea, and I'd never gotten what she found so enamoring about that endless blue expanse.

...My father had liked hiking, he'd taken me with him often to 'appreciate the wildlife'- I felt nothing from the trees or the occasional bird or animal we'd find other than a simple mental 'Huh, neat' before continuing without a care in the world.

This hadn't changed as I'd grown up- yet here I am suddenly seeing... something in this expanse of greenery, teeming with the occasional flash of a Pokemon- large or small.

Why was I starting to see it now? Was the world I was in just _that_ awesome to look at? Was it my transformation into some sort of fake-Maki that was allowing me to appreciate the sights, was my mind being manipulated by the change?

The circumstances ruined it a bit for me, but I tried not to let it get me down. The glittering leaves and the plant-filled forest was beautiful- nothing would change that.

A Hoothoot scared me out of my thoughts when I caught its red eyes staring at me from a tree branch. I managed to calm myself before I awoke the Pokemon resting in my arms, and instead of panicking further settled with scowling at the owl.

"Hoot" the owl responded with a tilt of its 'head', which is to say, its entire upper body.

Unsure of anything else to do, I just gave it a disapproving shake of my head and continued onward into the forest- doing my best to ignore all of the Cascoon and Silcoon hanging from the branches of trees.

This day was going better for me than both the last few days of excitement the entirety of last week.

At least I had that going for me.


	6. Chapter 6

The white-tinted forest was a sight to behold at night.

A great many creatures roamed inside the beautiful undergrowth and leaf-filled branches of the forest, all of which almost as cool and entrancing as the forest itself- not counting the Dustox, fuck _those_ assholes.

I'm probably being a bit stupid, but those things are _fucking vicious_.

Five, _five_ of them tried to jump me while we were walking through the moonlit greenery. Three of them I ended up having to bat away with my bare hands. One had ended up being brought into unconsciousness by Blossom and repeated Absorbs- or death, but I couldn't find it in me to really care about that either way. They were frustrating and vicious enough to frankly deserve it as far as I was concerned.

They angered me, and instead of smothering that fire I let it burn whenever saw another of those purple-green moths. I had no mercy for them.

Apart from the overly hostile wildlife, I found myself having little trouble admiring the scenery even with other thoughts keeping me to occupied to really pay full attention to my surroundings as I, small green companion in my arms, walked forward with as light a step as I could manage through the forest- walking in one direction in the hopes of finding an end to the forest and a possible way to get to civilization.

'So I died, still don't know how to process that'. I thought to myself, observing a pair of butterfly or moth-like bugs fluttering about in the deep, dark-blue sky- lit by both a sea of stars and the fitting, chilling sight of a full moon peaking through a veil of clouds.

It was probably some Beautifly- they're native to Sinnoh right? Pretty sure I've seen them when I used to play Pokemon.

Good times.

'And I'm in the body of someone of the opposite sex... sort of'. I continued, thoughts going over the past few days and the recent hours.

"Fucking Dustox." I muttered under my breath with what a piece of me knew to be an unusual amount of venom as the thought of that little _shit's_ horrid poison burning away at my eyes came back to me.

It wasn't a pleasant feeling, or a pleasant memory, but I thought about it anyway.

For all I know, that stuff could be lethal if ingested and probably was since, after all, it _is_ poison and Dustox are poisonous, I think.

Best not to dwell on that line of thought, I was dead anyway if that was true.

I continued to walk in silence, letting my thoughts drift even further away into the chilling clouds above, letting the forest scents flavoured with a 'heaviness' by cold slowly reach into my nose with every breath, bringing a shiver to my body and a sharpness to my mind with every light inhale of the icy air.

Cold. But a manageable one in this armour, which was actually pretty warm. Chilly as opposed to freezing.

I felt myself smile a little as the small little plant-bud wrapped in my arms shifted a little in her sleep, snoring lightly in an overly cute manner.

Something in me felt that this specific version of the Pokemon world I found myself in was less death-filled, if Blossom and the actions of the local fauna was anything to go by.

Excluding the rage-inducing Dustox of course. Those fucks can go right to hell in a net of acid-laced steel.

Alone with my thoughts, I continued my journey through the forest, listening to the occasional ruffle of faraway undergrowth and the ever-present wind.

After a time, I found my gaze stuck on an odd tree. It actually took me a while to comprehend _why_ it had attracted my attention- it was the bark. The tree was a lighter shade of brown than the others around it and the leaves where a lovely golden yellow. Recognition came to me easily.

A honey tree, I believe?

I smiled as memories of my first or second play through of Pokemon Pearl came to mind, more specifically the memories of my first Combee which was, surprisingly, female.

It was only half a year or so later that I found out how fucking lucky I was to get a female one. I didn't have much access to the internet then- still don't really, well, now I don't have any access to it- but still.

Although the feelings of pride had dulled with time, I could still slightly remember the happiness I had felt when the Combee had evolved and the joy of when I had gone through the entirety of Elite Four and the Champion using only my base (admittedly rather shitty) team and lots of 'herbs' I'd bought from somewhere that acted like a Max Revive.

Good times.

A rather loud yawn took me out of my nostalgia-fueled daze as Blossom started to wake up. My smile softened at her well rested bud-self.

Soon after she'd properly woken up and placed her on the grass below, careful to not harm the creature that was probably more durable than I was.

Most Pokemon can take ridiculous amounts of punishment and deal as much, which seemed to be a universal constant in every medium they came from. Anything I could do to that little plant would either heal easily or just be less inconveniencing than a scratch.

...And yet I was still careful. Her appearance was that of a small plant that had yet to even grow into a flower, why wouldn't I treat her like one?

Appearances are deceiving.

I was always told that animals needed exercise, this was mostly because of the way I treated my tabby cat Oscar (bless his soul). I would always hold him in my arms (he never complained), but as a consequence he never got any exercise since he didn't go out much and ended up being a bit... 'big boned'.

I only had him for four years, then one day he just never came back home on one of his rare occasional outings. I still miss him to this day.

Once I'd placed Blossom on the ground as delicately as humanly possible, in part to let my arms rest (how little this armour weighs _still_ confuses the fuck out of me), the pair of us continued walking forwards into the seemingly endless forest.

Or... not so endless.

When walking I hadn't exactly been unobservant- I was normally able to notice things that clashed with the background. I somehow _did not_ see the dark-green/brown sign that been blocking my way.

I'm pretty sure I'm not _that_ out of it, actually I felt more awake than I should- the chill of the night air going through your lungs tends to inspire a sort of awareness that you just don't get anywhere else. I still missed it despite this.

My thighs bumped into the hard wood, causing me to stumble back a bit as the piercing sound of metal-on-metal screeched out from near me, bringing my attention to the sign and causing me to stare at it in confusion. Then, for whatever reason, I looked down.

I was standing on a plain old road. A line of light brown earth that cleaved through the forest like a brown cut, a blemish on the green flesh of the grass. It was a road thats outline was dotted with plants, all a vibrant colour.

A road that, when looked to the end of, was also partially free of tree coverage.

Such an obvious road... how had I not seen this?

Am I just that inattentive? Something else?

A quick glance at the sign told me that Eterna City was "1.6 miles north."

My only guidance was an arrow pointing down the road.

Pointing towards a path that was lit by the moon- the rest of its luminescent white-glare filtered over the tops of the trees as it tried to hit the forest floor anywhere else.

As if mocking me, the sign gleamed with the moon's reflection as I was turning my head.

This was... awfully convenient?

I blinked at the sign and checked it again. It was still there and still the same sign, with the exact same text.

Frowning, I turned my head to the appointed direction the sign claimed (apparently north if it was to be believed) was the way to Eterna and clicked something in my neck in the process. The sensation sent a wince through me and right after I brought up a hand to massage.

Blossom squeaked at me, systematically jumping up and down like some really messed up, green pendulum while I eased the slight ache in what felt like muscle with the cool of my gauntlet's metallic surface.

For a moment, I just stood and blinked at her in a strange trance- before motioning towards the road.

"At least we know were we're going know." I told her.

She responded with a tiny squeak and a slight incline of her head.

I felt a smile tug at my lips and began walking down the flower-lined path.

Along the way I had started whistling, my companion joined me in her own squeaky way.

The tune I whistled in particular?

Even now, I'm not sure what I was humming that night.

[]

[ ]

[ ] Section Break

[ ]

[]

The sea of green leaves and brown tree trunks had slowly started thinning after what felt like a quarter of an hour of walking. I could barely see a slight change in the trail and a large mountain in the distance.

There were still a lot of trees, don't get me wrong. This area of the forest just wasn't as thickly wooded as the others. Maybe it was progress?

If I had my geographical knowledge of Sinnoh right (I very well could be wrong, I'm also assuming this is actually Sinnoh which might not be correct either), then that was likely Mt. Coronet. It was the place were a load of temporal and/or spatial shenanigans would be happening or has happened, depending on the 'if' and 'where' I'm in, whether that be 'game verse', 'anime verse', 'manga verse' or none of the above.

That could get annoying _real_ fast.

I _hated_ not knowing something, the saying knowledge is power is something I took to heart. When I was lacking power? It wasn't a nice feeling having no control over the situation.

 _Fuck_.

Ice crawled up my back.

I tried not to think about my current condition as someone in a foreign body.

I failed. I failed _hard_.

Desperately, I spared a glimpse at Blossom, attempting to distract myself with her hopefully amusing and cute actions.

Blossom was twirling around the path, looking at the moon, the trees and the flowers with a child-like interest and a smile on her face.

'Daaaw' intensifying.

I smiled, feeling a bit more stable, and turned back to the road.

Eventually Blossom decided to come back and be carried again, taking a nap in my arms while I continued to walk down the dirt path.

The journey through had been, for the most part, _very_ quiet. I hadn't seen or heard anything but the wind and the leaves for the past half hour or so. It had never been this quiet throughout my entire time here, so I was pretty sure I wasn't going to get attacked anytime soon.

I just taunted Murphy didn't I?

I just fucking taunted Murphy.

I hate my life.

Images of children running around and having Pokemon of all types smacking other random wild Pokemon about came to mind. I entertained the thought that the area had been depleted by grinding for only a moment then though of something else.

Pokemon were, for the most part, not stupid (when compared to Earthen animals anyway). In most continuities, if too many trainers trained in one area then it was likely that less Pokemon would stay there lest they get the shit beaten out of them again and again.

Made sense to me- _I_ wouldn't stick around if some dickish kid and his friend started beating the crap out of my neighbours, friends, wives and children for no reason and no one could stop them.

Or maybe I'd try fighting them and get destroyed myself?

I'm not good at self analysis.

Blossom shifted in my arms, perhaps she wanted to get down from her 'high perch'?

I'm guessing so.

I placed her back down on the dirt path and continued on, my arms had gotten tired from carrying her, not because she was heavy, but because I had been carrying her for quite a while- holding my arms in the same position was... tiring.

The two of us continued our trek down the trail, enjoying the relative silence of this likely well-walked path of the forest.

Only one sound could be heard, that being my footsteps as Blossom was too light to actually make any noticeable sound.

I turned around, a quick check to make sure that nothing had decided we looked like something to stalk, no horrors of the night, no ghosts, or Ghosts.

Honestly, even with Maki's apparently superior eyesight (and hadn't _that_ been fun to experience- not night vision, just better dark vision), I still lacked the knowledge to actually see anything that might tell of something following us, no way of guessing, no way of telling if a branch was leaning the wrong way or some other tracking bullshit.

However, I looked forward once again and found _them_.

When I looked forward, I froze.

Ghost types, loads of them. It was a group hidden partially by trees, just floating and staring soundlessly as they hovered. I could spot maybe seven floating skulls drapes in grey cloaks- singular red eyes showing them to be Duskull- a Pokemon that I couldn't remember _ever_ being in the Eterna Forest.

In addition, I could make out maybe twelve or more small, black figures with red pearls around their necks that I could identify as red and yellow-eyed, smiling Misdreavus. In numbers of two or four were a few leathery-skinned _things_ with golden mouths shaped in a perpetual grin that I could only guess were probably Banette- and I _know_ those are not something I've ever found in Sinnoh- and a single, lone, golden figure looking like a floating dress and witches hat- if it had a face, I couldn't see it.

They had come from nowhere, there was literally nowhere the bastards _could_ have come from- they had to have been there the entire time and I'd just now noticed them.

Fucking _Ghosts_.

Mother _fucking_ ghosts.

My thoughts ground to a halt as even more started to enter the little clearing. Hordes of Mismagius came phasing through the trees. Duskull and Banette just _crawled_ out of the shadows in the trees below.

They were making a ring around the golden thing, what I'm guessing is a Pokemon, and letting out a chorus of almost silent, ominous chanting.

"What the _fuck_?"

My heart froze, the sudden speech making the golden thing freeze in place- then turn to face me.

It was gold from the tip of its hat to the bottom of its 'dress'. The spectre's head beneath the hat a circle with two glowing crimson eyes outlined with a thick blackness while the sclera encasing the red was a bright yellow like the wispy ends of the tendrils coming off the things dress-like lower body.

Its neck had an unnatural bulge, as if a Looney Tunes character had eaten an american football- horrific and _wrong_. Below its neck, three gems arranged like a necklace glowed with a sinister red, and from there it's torso came to make a skirt-like end from the bottom of a dress, two strips of 'cloth' came forward like fingerless arms, tendrils that carelessly swayed in the breeze like the rest of its lower body.

A breeze I couldn't feel or hear. The air was silent.

The golden Mismagius did... _something_ with its red pearl 'necklace', covering it in some purple aura as it silently moved its mouth in a way that suggested laughing, but without any of the actual sound one would expect.

A silent laugh.

Yeah, no. _Fuck that shit_.

I picked up my comrade as she had frozen up completely- I couldn't blame her and didn't have the time to do so.

Immediately, I turned around and _fucking ran_. I ran as fast as I could and didn't look back as trees whipped past me in a blur of dark greens and brown, the road all but forgotten in my mad dash to safety.

The world had gotten darker without me noticing. It was only now that I saw its lose of the previously vibrant colours.

Far above, the moon was still showering the world in a pure, white light- though it was dulled to be more akin to a candle than the _fucking moon_.

I think that might have been why there were no Pokemon here, not the trainer grinding, but the _fucking ghosts_ had been scaring off the locals or keeping them quiet.

I stopped for only a moment to turn around-

And there was a skull, right in my face, a red light just hovering between both its sockets, glaring in my general direction and right into me like a drill.

An eye in a skull, a Duskull.

Panicked, I stumbled over my own toes as the Duskull bobbed up and down, staring at me with its freakish red orb, judging me or whatever it was they did- whatever it was it freaked me the fuck out.

I held Blossom close as I forced myself to my feet without arms by some inhuman will.

Quickly, I tried to rush to my feet, tried to flee, but I was surrounded on all sides by those fucking _things_.

I had no way to escape, nowhere to run or hide.

Then, from a tree, the Mismagius silently and slowly phased in with a manner like that of a calm walk, a ring of floating Misdreavus circling it like some sort of demented halo from hell, all staring at me and laughing silently.

The golden Mismagius didn't _merely_ stare at me like its hanger-ons, it pierced through me with those twin red eyes like a spear does wet paper.

And then the chanting started, an audible _wrongness_ that just wasn't _right_ , grating against my mind like sandpaper and burning like a metaphorical fire against my ears.

It was a high pitched hum with disconnected syllables that came in and out at random, if it wasn't so disjointed and just off on some primal level then I might have found it entrancing- like singing from a songbird.

But it _wasn't_ entrancing. It wasn't pretty or nice, it hurt my ears just to listen to it, from the sound of it I was far better off than blossom.

I could feel her tense. I could feel tears running down my hand.

In that moment, I felt hopeless, utterly lost and alone in the world, like an abandoned pup in the big city as the roar of cars came by- a contrast with the phantoms harassing me now in the now-claustrophobic woods.

I took a deep breath, and there was a clearness coming to my mind and rage pooling somehwere from within.

There you are adrenaline and rage, old friends.

I glared at the golden flying turd, angry that it would dare hurt me or my friend, _pissed_ that it would have the _audacity_ to bring harm to anyone in my presence, no matter how non-physical that harm may be- neigh, I was even _**more pissed**_ because of its apparent mental effects- the _fear_.

I took a step, the collective of ghouls and ghosts didn't move an inch.

When I took three more without any changes, continued. It wasn't until I was maybe three steps from the Mismagius that a reaction from the other party of the dead happened.

From my right a Duskull came out of nowhere, its eye glowing an abnormal purple and flaming like a fireball.

I brought up one hand on instinct and slapped it.

Instead of phasing through my hand like it probably should have, like it would with any ghost, the hand hit it right where the cheek of it would have been and sent it barrelling through a tree like a grey missile.

Utter silence.

I stared at my hand for a few moments in awe, then at the Mismagius and its 'crew' of Misdreavus, their orbit stopped as they stared at me, inhuman faces no longer smiling as they had been before, instead their eyes were wide and mouths open in a surprisingly _human_ expression of shock.

The golden Mismagius stared back at me with a similar expression. If I was of any judge then it was also shocked- its eyes had gone much wider than I'd thought possible and its squiggly line mouth was wide open, not quite an 'o', but as close as it likely could have gotten with the shape of its mouth.

In foresight, it was honestly rather comical- that shocked expression on something so fearful and mighty.

I took one step forward, and with it the closest collective of Ghosts floated away, backing off into the forest, phasing out of sight.

Even with their retreat, I could still see the glowing eyes watching me from the shadows, shifting around like many lights in the inky-darkness of my peripheral vision.

The golden Mismagus didn't move with its Mismagius halo as it dispersed into the woods, its shocked expression had been reeled in and was replaced with what I can only call "determined" or "angry-enough-to-burn-a-country."

I wasn't sure which. both were too likely.

Its eyes glowed an orange-red for a few moments as it stared down at me, moving itself slightly higher just so it could look down on me with eyes that spoke of great pain in my immediate future while also literally being 'higher up' than me like a king- or in this case a queen.

Ok, _fuck that shit too_.

I held Blossom in both of my hands and ran right passed it into the trees, _fuck the path_ , I needed to live for it to even be useful damn it!

A beam of fire twice my own size is the only way I can describe what went right past my side, barely missing me, burning uncomfortably against the only non-covered skin on my armor- my hands and head- and erasing anything it touched and setting ablaze what it couldn't quite _annihilate_ from existence.

All the trees it didn't vaporise had been toppled, like some giant ass fucking axe had been used to cut out the entire middle part of the forest in a single, super-heated blow. This was likely going to be the start of a forest fire, judging by the orange glow I could see in the corner of my eye.

"WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT!?" I screamed as I continued to flee from that thing, hoping beyond all hope that it wouldn't catch me, or hit me with an attack similar in power to what it had just barely missed with.

Or any attack at all, that would be good.

Unfortunately, I made a big mistake when I looked behind me to see if it was still there.

I never saw the tree that got in my way, I just ran straight into it and landed on my ass, winded to heck by the blow.

Then I looked down.

"No... No No NO!"

Blossom lay there in my hands, strange and viscous green fluid flowing from a cut and bruise on her yellow-flesh.

It had to be blood, that's what it was, that's all it could be.

 _I had made her bleed_.

Quickly I tried to get up, then a barrage of earth-covered rocks tore themselves from the earth and slammed with a kinetic 'crack' into my side in quick succession, bowling me over.

In my efforts, I stumbled, a loud crack coming from my nose, blood began to leak out of it as I hit the floor.

Sadness at what I'd done to Blossom turned to anger as I was knocked off my feet, and, in a condensed form powered by that rage, I _growled_.

"YOU FUCKING BITCH!"

I still don't know what the things gender _was_. Some Pokemon are just... they don't really have a difference that's noticeable between male and female.

Mismagius, and some Ghost Types, are examples of this.

Interesting tidbit.

I held Blossom in one hand when I eventually managed to get to my feet and pick up her bruised, injured form. My nose was pinched by my free hand as I ran back into the trees, companion in my arms- going up a steep hill in seconds while looking back to see if I had been spotted

And then there _were_ no trees.

I couldn't stop myself, I had built up too much momentum to do that and wasn't looking in front of me, not having learnt from my past mistake, and instead I went over the cliff I never expected, right into the watery depths below.

I screamed, I roared, I fell, weightless as time seemed to slow before my very eyes- before it all came rushing back and the air in my chest vanished from my lungs in an explosive gasp as my back hit solid rock. My armour did little to protect my breathing from the impact.

I'm pretty sure that I went unconscious for a bit at that point, I'm not sure. I just know that the world went black, the amount of time it did so I'm not sure of.

Then the light came back and I could see once again.

"Ow..." I hissed under my breath when I tried to move, pain coursing through my back. When I turned my head I found stone to greet me, the crashing waves raging below me like some great beast thrashing in a cage.

A cage with one wall, one of solid stone.

Not my best metaphor, but it gets my point across.

It was a furious sea- it would rip me to shreds if I entered it, I felt. As unlikely as it was that the waves could even do that- it would be rocks hidden beneath that would do it if anything.

I couldn't stay awake, my head felt woozy for a lack of anything else to say, but I couldn't risk that thing finding me, it wouldn't be difficult for the bastard to vaporise me in an instant if it found me.

Pained, I tried to shuffle to my feet- then, _realisation_.

"Wait...?"

Oh God.

"Where is Blossom...?"

No answer came.

I looked at the waves.

My stomach flipped, I suddenly felt vomit on my lips as an acrid acidic aftertaste as I realised just where she had gone.

"No...?" I asked the open air, disbelief and cold rushing through my body and anchoring me to the stone beneath like a thousand pounds of added weight.

My hands shook, my entire damn body _shook_ and didn't stop.

She's _gone_?

She's gone...

A light squeak broke my tirade, shattering my thoughts as I turned to the cliff face, there lay a slightly bleeding Budew, looking weak but alive.

There lay _Blossom_.

"Oh thank God!"

That weight left, in its place a rabid energy that pushed me to my companion.

I hurried towards her small form until my back was against the cliff. I picked her up gingerly, fussing over her like a mother hen, only stopping when she squeaked at me.

A thought came to me.

Oran berries heal shit right?

Manically, I searched through the pockets of my armour, checking for any Oran berries that I could give her.

I knew I had one somewhere- Hah!

Luckily three remained, the others had been turned into a blue mush from the chase in the woods.

I carefully took one of them and held it next to my friends mouth.

My only friend in the world, and I had nearly lost her.

The thought made me queasy.

I don't want to think about it.

I carefully placed my little companion on my lap, stroking her bud, staring at the blue sky as the waves below us continued to thrash against the cliff side.

From here I had no idea where we could go, there was no goal in mind but to get to Eterna City, that plans gone bust.

Where was I going to go now?

Was I trapped here now, forever?

Doomed thoughts took me, and soon after sleep did too.


	7. Interlude One

Interlude Mismagius

The darkness, the forest oh-so dark.

"Little do they know I will tear their bones apart~"

I feel them, their souls crying in fear, desperation, a great need to escape...

It's so _**delicious**_.

A chuckle, an unholy howl as they fall.

A sirens song gone wrong

Meat for the flesh, bones for the mind, and an undying fear of those which lie.

"The dead shall rise on this winter night~"

They follow, small weaklings feeding off a bigger beast, a thing that lives and feasts.

And then they cease.

A beast comes from the side.

"Human in shape, empty inside, so much to hide and so little time~"

The souless Dark flees like thunder, an almost unseeable thing resting in its metal hands.

"They shall know the cold breath of death~"

And so they go forth, the deceased in all forms from Skull to Girl to Broken Toy.

They shall not escape this ploy, an endless lust for broken dreams.

Almost like my life from the heavens void.

So hollow are they that hunt, they that slay on this day so dark.

A great hunger, a hole with nothing to fill, a place that is so dark.

They that hunt in the bark.

An illusion most profound.

A beast, a hunter has been found.

A Skull of no more than age sixty three goes flying through the trunk of a great willow tree.

"How peculiar and strange, such a thing from the Golden Age~"

They that hunt take a breath and retreat into the depths.

Cowards they be, something I am not.

I hunt like the rain- fast with the pain.

One hundred powers- one hundred days.

One thousand ages awaiting their end of days.

All in vain.

"All in vain~"

"Mystical Fire~"

A blast of flame, so colorful and vain.

So painful and restrained.

The shape falters, a curse, a cry of pain.

So great is the hunger I feel for their immortal souls.

A being unbound, a taker of tolls.

The end is near, I feel the sea.

So salty and grey.

"I ask of thee a plea~"

"I wish to steal all the joys they took from me~"

A crash, a cry, an unheavenly _toy_.

Such is life, that which they took from me.

A crack and a splat, a dead girl and her Budew...

Such a shame for them to be so rude.

To take their life out of harms way...

Such is the pain of unliving joy, a neverending cycle of pain and decay...

A place that can never be abstained of dismay.

A woosh and a flap, the wind has come back.

The two have been killed by their own foolish guilt

"Such a shame I couldn't hand them their pain~"

And so did we leave for the day

Ready to return at a later time, a thing for the next me to employ for her joys.

Silence.

A/N An updated and slightly tweaked Interlude.


	8. Chapter 7

I awoke feeling... _sore_. Oh-so-very sore.

The entirety of my back had become a mess of burning and aching, with my spine feeling the most put off with the experience. Having slept on solid rock would have been bad enough, I imagine, for a person's back.

Doing it while wearing what basically amounts to full plate armour?

Yeah, _probably_ not the smartest of ideas I've ever had- but its not like I had much of a choice.

Other than removing it.

...

What had awoke me was a combination of the frustrating aches that plagued my back and the high-pitched, irritation-inspiring squawks of a thousand seagulls- piercing shrieks that had heralded more than a few 'accidents' on clothing, or on one or two occasion food I was eating being stolen right from my grip.

Anyone who had been shat on so unceremoniously by a seagull could tell you this much: you either do, or you don't notice it.

With me, it's always been the last one.

Every. _Fucking_. Time.

It's incredibly frustrating, as you can imagine.

They were like an especially prepared package from Satan himself- silent like a butterfly, and as humiliating as being knocked out cold by a paraplegic fly.

I'm being a bit dramatic, but the points stands: seagulls are tricky, dirty fucks, and I don't like them one bit.

They have dropped their white pellets of war on me a fair amount of times in the past, and likely will continue to do so for the foreseeable future, as much as I am loathe to admit it.

When my mind caught up yet again and the more likely conclusion came to me- those shrieks were far more likely to be those of Wingull, not winged-rats masquerading as birds- I found myself a little... depressed.

It was the realisation that, once again, I _wasn't_ dreaming. The little bout of sadness lasted nowhere near as such as I had mere days ago, thankfully.

I think the last few days have desensitised me to crazy shit.

I'd hope so, my life appears to be going even more shitty and crazy by the second- _some_ mental resistance would be nice.

The waves below me seemed to have calmed down, they started slowly lulling me back to sleep.

Deciding that, instead of sleeping, I should probably get up and start doing something somewhat productive, I did so. After forcing myself onto my metal clad legs and surveying my immediate surroundings, I began to evaluate a plan of action.

Blue sky as far as I could see, leaning against the mountain as I was, with small dots hovering through the sky.

The Wingulls, probably.

Blossom was laying next to a wall a little to my right, snoring adorably as she did.

After stretching my back a bit and yawning, I checked over the edge of the cliff face to get a better view of the situation and my surroundings.

Below me were lines of jagged rocks, stabbing out of the earth like a multitude of disorderly, rotted teeth.

I winced at that, realising just how close to death I was yesterday.

Assuming it actually sticks.

I looked up.

Then looked down again, wincing slightly at the dancing blues and purples in my vision and cursing the world.

Bloody sun.

The sun was still... young? I think that's the term, it was still low in the sky.

So that would make it morning? Yeah, that sounds right.

The sky had cleared considerably, enough for me to see a rather smallish island on the horizon when I looked again after rubbing away the 'color dots' in my vision.

I ignored the island, instead looking left and right from my current position. I was on a cliff.

I needed to get down this cliff, so I should logically check for ledges that I could use to bring myself and Blossom down to the ground below safely.

The problem is I couldn't exactly just jump down. I'd break every bone in my lower body like a toothpick if I tried.

Probably.

When, upon further inspection, I found various little cracks in the wall that actually looked like I could plausibly use them as handholds, I was ecstatic and celebrated a bit too loudly.

By that, I mean I nearly fell off of the cliff when the sound of a yawn echoed behind me.

The sound Blossom made was a rather loud "Mwah!", almost a yawn but halfway incomplete somehow. She startled me, both with her surprising volume and the odd intensity of the noise. Rather fortunately, I managed to catch myself before I dropped down into the water-covered spiky doom that awaited me below- almost hungrily staring back at me like the abyss.

I shook off that feeling, instead checking behind me.

Sat there, against the cliff, was a small groggy looking plant beast blinking drearily at nothing in the most adorable fashion. For a moment, she stayed still, before then standing up on two yellow legs that could barely be called such and began doing something like a morning stretch.

Sighing at my almost-death, I took a moment to set myself next to the small plant monster, made to pick her up (but decided to rethink that idea when she made an adorable grumbling noise at me) before just settling my back against the rock.

We watched the waves for a while, just letting the rather soothing song of the ocean wash over us like... waves? Fuck if I know, nothing else comes to mind.

It was time spent so I could properly formulate a plan.

"So, I think I may found us a way out of here." I told her calmly, feeling the slightest bit of a smile on my face.

Then I winced.

Apparently you can only suppress thoughts about being in an "out of body" experience in a far more literal sense for so long before it sneaks up on you and shanks you.

Still working on those analogies.

"Bwah?" came an eloquent reply from my green companion.

Burying the emerging thoughts under the ideas I had began forging for myself that would hopefully lead to escape, I explained my plan to her.

"I think there are some hand holds over there," I pointed towards the cracks in the rock face I had found during my little search earlier, knowing full well that this could go real bad if I messed up.

"That I might be able use to bring us down to surface safely. when we get there we can just walk until we reach proper land."

She got to her feet proper once again and started to search around for... something.

"What are you looking for?" I asked her politely.

'Where's Rachael?" my mind threw in my 'face', an old joke out of nowhere that made me question my stability slightly.

I snorted, not bothering to think on the poor joke or my mental capabilities for much longer- instead focus on the sight before me and my companion.

She blinked at me, shook her head for a moment, then did some... jumping?

Whatever she was trying to mime out to me in this little game of guess-the-thing was lost in translation.

"I have no idea what you are trying to tell me." I explained, a small frown on my face.

She huffed for a moment, then just walked up to me and smiled.

I picked her up, ruffling through my pocket and taking the last Oran berry, I passed it to her, letting her nibble on it.

Then I realised a critical flaw in my planning.

"Well, a problem just occurred to me."

"Bwaaah?" Came the wordless response, clearly confused by tone of voice but unintelligible in any other way.

"I have no way of keeping you attached to me" I replied simply.

She frowned for a moment, stamping her foot against my armour lightly. I felt like she was a little peeved about something.

She then breathed a heavy sigh, for something of her size anyway, and started shaking erratically.

I got the message this time, and placed her on the ground.

The little bud Pokemon walked up to the wall and pointed the flower bud on her head at something on the wall.

'Oh' I blankly muttered mentally as she directed my vision directly to a mass of vines and plant matter growing off of the cliff side.

Enough for someone with the right expertise or experience to make a rope out of. Something I actually had.

Now I feel like an idiot.

At that moment, I realised why she was so displeased.

I noisily shuffled over to the vines, my metal boots impacting with the stone floor with almost-silent but not unnoticeable 'clangs'. To begin, I started puling gently, testing them.

They held well enough. If the vines had grown over the top I might have been able to use it to climb my way over the top of the cliff, disregarding armour, because of how strong they seemed. Sadly, they were instead just sticking out of the bottom of the stone, making such a task impossible. If I pulled it from the rock then its only use would be as a small bit of rope when weaved together.

A rope I could use to keep Blossom attached to me while I descended.

I pulled with strength that a body of this size had no right having (or at least strength I wasn't used to, probably that actually), and eventually ripped a sizeable portion of the vines from the wall.

I was quick to get to work, knotting the vine into a some-what sturdy thin cord of plant ropes.

It was only until after I had made the bloody thing did I start to question where exactly I had learned to make a rope out of plants, sure I knew it was possible but I didn't know how to make them direct-...

Bodyswap.

Again, I had _almost forgotten_ that this body I'm in isn't entirely my own... The fact that I don't have a way to turn myself back to normal wasn't something I wanted to acknowledge, but I had to at some point.

And now I was thinking about it.

Fuck.

Stop, _please_.

I dropped the crude rope, my stomach falling like a stone with it.

No, not here please.

My legs started shaking, this was hardly productive for my continued surviv-

No.

I laid down, and breathed deeply, trying to calm myself before the waterworks could even begin.

I failed.

[]

[ ]

[ ] Section Break

[ ]

[]

I'm not too much of a 'man' to admit that I cried.

I had laid down for a while, let myself go and just weeped.

It was just too much.

I had to face this at some point, I wasn't the strongest guy mentally after all. I couldn't just bottle it up and hope for all the stress to just fade. I couldn't just be normal in such a crazy situation.

This wasn't my normal life.

I couldn't just act like it was.

I can't outrun my own feelings, yet I can outrun the spirits of the dead.

Funny huh?

My only companion in this world lay against me, a comforting presence in a place that just felt so... empty.

I smiled, even if it was only a little one.

Ok, so first of all, I need to get my shit together and fasten that damn rope, I'll deal with this _mess_ later when there's more time.

I collected the rope and my companion, tying it all around her, leaving most of her bulb, her eyes and mouth exposed and trying to make the rope somewhere between 'not too loose' and 'not uncomfortably tight'.

I fastened it against the back of my belt, steeling myself for the climb.

"Blossom?" I asked my companion.

She didn't answer, but I could tell she was listening from behind me.

I hate speeches, but this situation seemed deserving of one- no matter how terrible.

"If I don't make it and you do? I want you to not bother with me, forget I existed and just live."

I tilted my head, looking her in the eyes as best I could with the rather awkward positioning.

"Can you do that for me?"

Such a small face, filled with such reluctance, hesitant to say anything at all, to even _react_.

"I wont force you, we're friends after all aren't we?"

I smiled at her, I think she returned it. I checked again and saw an even brighter one of her own.

A bond formed so fast... was it because Budew are just more friendly Pokemon than the average, was it the fact that she appeared to be younger than I and she looked up to me or was it the fact that we, as two sapient and sentient beings, had been together for so little time and already fled from death itself?

Either way, I saw a friend in those eyes, a friend for life.

Let's just hope that I can be worthy of being called the same.

On that day, in that moment, was a bond forged in the flames of hardship. A friendship to last.

I brought out one partially covered hand and forced it into the closest crack in the rocks I could find, forcing it open slightly as dust and pebbles burst out of the gap I had created. It was clearly a feat of strength that shouldn't be normally possible, at least for me.

This could be useful.

Within moments I was suddenly hanging by a single hand from the cliff side, a leg kicking out and digging into another crack that it could barely reach.

I moved my right hand to the next gap and brought myself lower down the cliff, another leg kicking out and digging into the gap.

I had a long way to go. I couldn't make a single mistake. One mistake meant falling, and falling meant death- not just for me, but for Blossom as well.

Sure, in the world before this one I had died and came back, that didn't mean I was going to test it out a second time- it could have been a fluke.

If I die and I don't go somewhere else? I didn't 'respawn' somewhere else?

I don't want to think about it.

[]

[ ]

[ ] Section Break

[ ]

[]

Down and down I went, slowly descending down the cliff side as the water playfully bashed against the rocks below, the sound of Wingulls only getting closer as I descended the cliff side with the speed of an ancient snail.

It wasn't _that_ bad, but it was still pretty damn slow. I wasn't an expert climber by any means and I didn't want to get this wrong any 'step' of the way, so that meant a lot of otherwise safe looking holds were tested first to see if I could hold them, which wasted valuable time.

Again, one mistake would mean death, that in turn would mean either reappearing somewhere else, or dying permanently- for me anyway.

Blossom isn't immune to death, or even being injured in general, so she'd die as well.

I'm not having that.

On my back, attached to the back of my belt, Blossom hung from a cord of vines, suspended and silent, letting out the smallest of squeaks every now and again as the wind buffeted against me, slowing my progress ever so slightly as I descended.

I continued to climb down. I'm shit with measurements to be frank, but a good estimate for how far I had to go now would be "house sized" instead of "roughly the size of a house stacked on a hotel that was sleeping on another house" that I'd roughly 'estimated' when I started climbing down.

Honestly, I probably could have jumped that last bit because Super Science from the future is bullshit and I happen to be in the body of someone in armour from an age of Super Science.

I could logically probably take the fall, I'm not sure if the rope holding Blossom could however, and even then I wasn't actually certain without a shadow of a doubt I had enhanced durability.

A hand moved here and a leg dug in there, a few minutes later I was standing on a rock, a rock pool laying right in front of me, some algae and limpets (to my surprise) as well as a single Shelldar laying on the rocks a safe distance away.

It smelled like any rock pool does. Pretty shitty with a hint of salt and waterlogged dog, except the dog was made of water-based plants.

No one ever said that they smell like wet dog, but I damn well know they do! Even if everyone said otherwise, I know for a fact that some dogs had to have been in every rock pool ever conceived, because they all smelled like it.

Ignoring my own mental tirade, I chose my path, a straight one going through to what appeared to be a sandy beach on the horizon, and continued to walk down it. I was hoping to come to shore at some point in the near future, and from there perhaps work my way to civilization.

Perhaps it might be my inner Brit talking, but where there's a beach there tends to be lousy beach goers.

[]

[ ]

[ ] Section Break

[ ]

[]

I had found nothing but rocks, rock pools and even more rocks for I don't even know how long.

Sure, the cliffs had ended maybe... half an hour ago? Something like that, but on my left there had just been a massive wall of dirt replacing said rock wall,.

Even if the cliffs themselves had ended ages ago they had been replaced with practically the same- mountains of dirt. Odd, because that's something that I know for a fact doesn't happen normally.

Blossom (I'd let her down after we'd gotten to sand) and I had been searching for a path that could lead up from the beach and allowed us to get to the 'top' of the dirt walls that blocked in the beach, because I felt there might be something up with that geographic feature.

You know, stairs or something.

So far, we'd had little luck in progressing on any of those tasks.

In my pocket I still had the cord of plant rope, could be useful later (though I doubt it).

The only things of interest that had occurred during our search had been Blossom fighting off two randomly occurring Geodude using some form of draining attack (They had fallen like stones in water which, after thinking it, had amused me to no end), helping a Magikarp that had been flopping around on the beaches sands for no reason back into the sea (and boy did that make me feel like a good person), and then shooing off the flocks of Wingull that had decided I looked like a nice thing to roost on.

The fact that I'm not covered in shit from random gulls is still somewhat surprising, even though I know they're not actual seagulls.

You'd think they'd have _some_ similarities to actual seagulls considering that they are basically the same thing, just from another world.

Or... wait, no, seagulls don't turn into Pelicans when they get older, my bad.

Sarcasm, in case you couldn't tell.

You sort of start to miss the greedy little bastards with extended leave from them. Not by much, but their absence makes it even more apparent how much this _isn't_ home.

We had continued to search around for the next couple of hours, when we found a way to get onto the main land instead of just on the beach, it was a gravel trail that had a worn down sign next to it.

The trail itself went straight up at an angle towards... _something_.

And, thankfully, there was a sign to go with it.

"Floaroma Town, six miles south." I read aloud for the benefit of my companion, who stood next to me. A large smile was plastered on her face, and now I was beginning to sport one of my own.

She'd taken to the habit of singing and dancing.

I have no idea why.

"So this could finally be it." I stated, barely believing it myself.

We started moving again, Blossom waddling behind me as gravel crunched under foot.

[]

[ ]

[ ] Section Break

[ ]

[]

It had happened on the way there.

While we were walking on the path I'd given Blossom a command to drain the shit out of anything we came across that looked weak enough for her to take on, most of what we found being other Budew or some horrifying giant Cricketot and equally as terrifying large Wurmple just lazing around and bathing on the side of the road.

Lazy fucks.

And then Blossom lit up like a Christmas tree, in the heat of the moment I had no idea what was happening and was mostly blinded by the light she had started emitting. It was white and pure, practically as bright as the sun.

And then the white light brightened down, leaving spots in my vision that refused to fade no matter how much I blinked.

When Blossom next 'spoke' it was with an unfamiliar voice, her squeaking had become a little lower in pitch and had become less like 'squeaking' and more like speaking.

It was like the difference between a little kid before and after puberty. Noticeable, but ultimately not that drastic a change.

Considering that Evolution is basically ageing, that makes a surprising amount of sense.

What came out of Blossom in her new form, her first 'words' as a Roselia were something I can only describe as someone with heavily accented French repeating 'Grr' and 'Ahh' in rapid succession in alternating tones (the said tones being either high or very high).

It was melodious as all hell and surprisingly more pleasant for the ear than you'd think from description alone.

It was easier to use the word 'it' in any descriptions for it than other words.

 _It_ was many things, the front most being surprising.

I wiped away at my eyes, the spots refusing to fade, gave up, then stared in Blossoms general direction.

"So, you Evolved."

She responded with a high pitched humming sound and a small little dance that reminded me of the Kazotsky Kick taunt from what little I'd played of Team Fortress 2.

I can't remember what the actual name of the dance that taunt's pretending to be is.

I miss Steam.

I miss home.

 _Don't think about it._

I explained that my vision had gone to shit, and we waited for it to go back to normal. Blossom meanwhile just continued dancing blissfully for most of the wait, humming an oh-so familiar tune that I still couldn't remember the source of.

I think she had a thing for music, or singing, I'm not sure which one, if either, fits.

Would it be like bird song? Probably singing then.

I picked her up, holding her to my stomach as I got to my feet and continued down the trail, feeling calm, strangely so.

Blaming it on my imagination. I didn't bother lingering on it, instead just concentrating on placing one foot in front of the other.

Though something smelled great, floral.

It took me a moment before I realised I was holding a flower of literal calming scents.

[]

[ ]

[ ] Section Break

[ ]

[]

We had walked for a long time, the barren dirt suddenly being replaced with flowers, flowers everywhere- all hues, all colours.

We walked on for at most a minute, and the only thing I could see was _more flowers_.

This is just fucking ridiculous!

Everywhere I looked there were flowers, even the gravel road had some growing out of it in places!

My incredulity wasn't shared by Blossom, who had long since abandoned me in exchange for frolicking blissfully in the practically endless fields, dancing around like a ballerina on crack.

She had been doing so for the past hour.

I was getting a little worried honestly.

Sure, she was still following me, at a slower pace, but we were being slowed down severely by her frolicking.

When I asked her what she was doing I didn't get much from her, just more ballerina-ing and cheerful-sounding, vaguely French gibberish.

When I asked her to stop I gained even less ground, she, instead of refusing outright, just ignoring me and continuing her frolicking.

At this point I'd just given up, walking forward and letting her follow at her own pace.

It is with the utmost certainty I can say that when I saw the outline of Floaroma Town on the horizon I didn't freak the fuck out from relief.

"Fucking finally!"

I only freaked out a _little_.


	9. Chapter 8

The breeze was pleasant, Blossom's singing was melodious and my hair is dark blue!

Sure, in the back of my mind I knew Maki had blue hair, but it hadn't really hit me until now.

While the hair i was currently 'wearing' was blue, it was a significantly darker shade than Maki Morrovitch's.

Just the fact that there was _something_ about me in this form that seperated the two of us in some way did wonders for my psyche. You'd never really think about it unless you were in that situation, but not being in a body you had grown used to and used for your whole life was a _very_ weird experience and rather depressing if you yourself had no way to control the change.

If you were exactly the same as someone else? It was worse.

Think about it, even if you know that, logically, you are still you, your body is a carbon clone of someone else.

You aren't unique.

It's not a good feeling, and it's hard to stomach.

I'm unable to put into words how _relieved_ I was when I learned there was at least _something_ different about us while I was in this form.

My eyes were green in this form, hers were a piercing crimson (how the fuck that's even possible I'm leaving to Super Science, eyes and hair aren't just red or blue, it just doesn't happen unless you count albinos).

My eyes and hair weren't like hers, not entirely.

It helped my sanity greatly to know I had _some_ semblance of unique-ness to differentiate me from her, it's hard to explain to someone that isn't going through the problem, but it feels a great deal better to have that feeling of identity.

when stuck in a situation such as mine? Identity starts to blur a little.

But only a little, the problem is that 'little' bit can snowball _hard_.

Blossom had changed her dance when we were half of the way there, singing as well.

It was a pleasant sounding noise. Her dancing made her look like a midget goblin that had taken a course on Ballae.

Mostly meant as a compliment.

Floaroma was a nice, small town.

The houses and shops were arranged pretty haphazardly with the only main connecting feature of the place being the road that went through the entire town like a snake.

Around this chaotic little town was trees as far as the eye could see.

Despite the lack of order in the placement of the houses, it was still charming and a little beautiful in its own way.

Blossom and I had entered a town embellished in flora, the occasional Pokemon would move by my armoured feet, making small animal sounds like they are wont to do.

I mostly stayed on the end of town, reluctant to actually enter on the grounds that:

A) I was wearing armour fit for war.

B) I looked like a Star Trek reject.

C) I didn't have a plan for what to _do_ when I entered.

Eventually I came to the conclusion that I was probably going to want to get a Pokeball for Blossom and supplies, like food, water (Potions suck) and more Pokeballs for forcefully bringing nature under my heel!

Or just using them as a convenient method of storing potentially massive, but friendly, murderbeasts.

Both options are equally valid.

The only problem being that I wasn't exactly rolling in money, I was without a single... Poke? Dollars? Yen?

I don't fucking know.

My only real option was theft, I'm no thief and I'm also not particularly good at the art of stealth.

Also, Pokemon exist.

Police exist.

Police _with_ Pokemon exist.

Any theft I committed was likely going to be tracked down straight to me, whether it be by a member of the Police with an Arcanine, a disgruntled owner of a Houndoom or some other such shenanigans, I was going to get caught.

While thinking on this, I had entered town, making sure to be as inconspicuous as possible, doing my best to pretend to be a cosplayer or something similar.

By acting a bit more "normal" (read as walk as if I was trying to get somewhere and pretending to check the time on an invisible watch every so often), I appeared to be attracting exactly as much attention, if not _more_ than if I just walked without pretending to do anything at all and just walking.

'Today I learned that, no matter how you act, if you wear something strange and eye catching then people are going to fucking look at you'.

By this, I mean that, while not that many people were up (I'm guessing either a work day or early morning, but the suns position says otherwise, but then again I don't actually know how to- Ok, nevermind, abandoning train of thought) those that were did stare at me quite a bit.

I mostly saw confusion, but most just shrugged it off and continued on with their day.

The few that did stare for longer than a few seconds either decided to get the fuck away from me for some reason, or got out their phones and took pictures.

The only person who didn't seem amazed or scared that did come up to me seemed nice, he was a polite elderly man.

Apart from his kindness, steel-grey hair and blue eyes he wasn't particularly unique.

He asked me if I was lost.

I told him I was just sightseeing, he went on his way.

I ignored him in favour of trying to find a _godamn Pokemart_ or somewhere that serves the same purpose.

I was, for the large part, unsuccessful.

I did eventually find one, but it had long turned noon by that point and it was closed.

What was the plan again?

...

I didn't actually think about that did I?

Well, I'm a dense motherfucker.

I now have two- no, three problems.

A) I was trying to steal anything at all.

B) The place I was going to try stealing from was closed and I didn't have the means to even enter the building.

C) I'm not capable of anything stealthy, like, at all.

So, I decided to walk around the building, check for a way in, thinking about a way to break in, that sort of thing.

Eventually though, I was forced to just sit on a bench near the building and be left with my thoughts.

Blossom sat beside me, seemingly aware that something less than happy was going to be happening in the next few hours or minutes.

I could tell because she'd stopped singing or dancing.

This was more for her than me, I could forage for berries if either of us got hungry, what I _couldn't_ do was keep her up permanently without a Pokeball.

I saw my chance, it was a quick one and not one I expected.

A man in a typical store uniform opened the door, his looks and stature had him mentally pinned as someone in his later years of life to me.

I tried not to think on that.

The man, who I noticed was wearing some sort of white cap, closed the door and walked off to a building on the other side of the road.

He'd left the door open, not locking it.

He was either forgetful or naive.

I'm not sure which is better.

Quick to react, I leaped to action, Blossom doing the same by my side as I made a mad dash to the entrance and opened it to little resistance, entering the store.

The door made little noise -mentally I made the guess that it was well oiled or something similar- as I tore it open and dashed into the store, kicking away a metal door stop on accident and sending it hurtling into a pile of some cans of food product I didn't catch the name of.

Hissing, I ignored it and ripped a plastic bag from behind the stores counter, quickly turning on my heel to frantically search for some basics.

I saw the Pokeballs and took five, my hands shaking at the idea of what I was about to do- neigh, _in the process of doing_. My stomach was uneasy and sweat was going down my face even as my heart beat a thousand miles a second.

I was excited, yet disgusted and a whole pile of other emotions so malformed I couldn't recognise them.

I took another from the shelf holding the Pokeballs, quickly scanning the same aisle until I found Potions.

My mind was screaming at me to run, but I was too busy taking Potions from the shelf- I stopped myself at the third before turning around to flee.

Almost an after thought, I took an Ether from a shelf to my right to complete the pile of goods.

Blossom approached with a trio of tiny Oran berries somehow held in her rose-like hands. I lowered the bag, sweating profusely and panting heavily.

If I had a mirror and stared at myself, I'd probably see dilated pupils and the face of a crazed psycho.

I sure felt like one.

Blossom dropped the Oran Berries into the bag.

She wasn't smiling.

Almost as quickly as I had came in, I wrenched open the door to the outside, turning quickly to flee by going behind the store-

"Stop! Stop! Theif! Help!"

I turned around, startled by the voice.

'Across the road, silver hair, blue eyes, old, scared' my mind supplied.

I was frozen, staring at the face of a man I knew next to nothing about, the same man who had been kind to me a mere few hours ago. His face looked so pained and confused for reasons I felt I couldn't describe.

Then Blossom shrieked and we were moving again.

He was an old man, he couldn't keep up.

He wasn't what I was worried about.

I was more concerned for the people he was going to be attracting with his shouts.

'I'm sorry' I uselessly said in my head.

We ran and ran through a little bit of town, the old man had long ago stopped in his chase.

Blossom had stopped singing or smiling.

That hurt me slightly more than knowing I had robbed a kind old man.

I wont try to justify my actions, they were horrid.

There was likely a thousand things I could have done instead.

Nothing I say can redeem me.

'I'll pay you back later' I told myself.

I didn't know If I ever would.

We continued to rush through town, the blue plastic bag hanging by my side as I continued to run, not looking anywhere but forward as I tried- and probably failed- to mask my feelings of panic.

The whole town was mostly going home or already in since it was noon, the visage of a woman wearing armour and a Roselia rushing through town late into the afternoon didn't garner much attention.

We had retreated back into the woods, travelling forward and not looking back.

Eventually, after a long period of running, we entered the shade of the forest.

I still felt panicky, sweat continued to swamp my body, almost an unnatural amount.

Sure, the man who owned the place was very unlikely to be inconvenienced much by me stealing... actually, how much did I take in money?

Pokeballs are around five hundred yen (is it yen? I'll have to check later) and Potions are around two hundred so I'd gone and stole around... three thousand six hundred yen?

I didn't know much about currency, knowledge of the British sterling, the Euro, Yen and the dollar being the extent of my knowledge on what currency came from which country.

One hundred yen was roughly a dollar and a dollar was worth a bit more than a pound sterling so...

I'd stolen upwards of around thirty six pounds worth of supplies.

More than I'd expected and hoped.

Fuck.

That... That was disheartening.

I set myself down on the ground, Blossom joined me in silence.

Neither of us were willing to break it.

Eventually I did.

"So... that happened".

Blossom didn't appear to outwardly acknowledge that I'd said anything.

"Well..." I took a Pokeball from the blue plastic bag, the imprint on the front saying 'stop by again!' only making me feel even more guilty as I took the plastic sphere from the equally plastic bag and played with it in my hands.

I tried to suppress the guilt, it only partially worked.

"Do you", I paused to clear my throat, "want to go in this Pokeball?"

This time, Blossom turned to me. Her eyes were open, and they drilled right into my soul.

She just stared at me, as if judging me, then nodded.

Unsure how to operate a Pokeball, I poked her with the end of it, holding the top half of the device and hoping for the best.

She was sucked into the ball in a flash of red and white, not very intense in its glow.

The dings and click went by quickly.

Before I could release her the Pokeball opened, as if from the inside, then deposited a Roselia.

Pokeballs didn't hold Pokemon properly apparently, that or a Pokemon can leave if it wants.

Information for later I guess.

She stared at me, doing nothing but staring.

Actually, she wasn't breathing either.

Did she not need to breathe? Did she work like a tree and photosynthesis, absorbing Co2 and creating oxygen in the process?

I found myself genuinely interested in the idea, filing it away for later.

Then I stopped daydreaming and started staring back into those two, beady eyes.

She was probably judging me, I would too in her situation- what worried me was what she was judging, my actions? My clearly expressed feelings? I don't know and probably never would and it worried me.

It worried me that the only friend I had by my side might leave me.

It worried me that I would let her go without a second thought.

It worried me that I would never see her again if she did decided she wished to leave

I slumped, any and all energy drained from me in a few moments of quick thought. I could feel a tear slowly descend down my cheeck, I wiped it away without a thought as I tried to stop the waterworks once again.

Blossom cut through my sadness with one simple action, one simple and amazing action.

She latched onto my neck and hugged me.

I wasn't sure how to react, I was just frozen and confused, dazed.

I placed her on my lap, stroking her head as I went into deep thought.

I don't know how long she and I lay sat there, just taking in the sights.

I calmed myself, breathing deeply as I turned back to my partner.

"Alright, enough with the crying. We have places to be, by that I mean anywhere but here!" I raised my hand, a wide smile on mine and Blossom's face as we got back to traversing the forest. My plan was to hope for the best and plan for the worst.

When the local law enforcement finally started to get on my trail I'd be too far in the forest for them to pursue.

Or at least, that's what I hoped.

I absent-mindedly brushed a lock of dark cyan hair to the side, the trees were ever so slowly gaining a shade of orange, like autumn had come early. It was a nice sight.

The sun shone just out of sight with its blinding radiance, rays of its golden glory trickled through the amber leaves like sap.

And then something kicked me in the face.

My sudden shriek was accompanied by a piercing hiss from the mass of... _brown_ that had attached itself to my face and began trying to acquaint it's claws with my eyeballs rather passionately.

I screamed at the thing, flailing around like a dead fish as I fell onto my back. Blossom was somewhere to my left, I could hear her angry hissing, even with the thing trying to claw out my eyeballs.

Seconds after the thing leaped onto my face it fell off like a facehugger, limp and hissing in a low, weak animalistic snarl that spoke of dangerous things to come.

Blossom pulled some sort of weird particles from the brown creature that I could now recognise as a Buneary. The little rabbit was short, slightly taller than Blossom if you ignored the large ears that towered over it- or would if it wasn't wheezing and laying on the ground.

Brown fur with large puffs of cream coloured fluff around the tips of its ears and around it's stomach.

I looked at the gasping little rabbit, then got a rather interesting idea.

You had to weaken a Pokemon, then throw a Pokeball at it, right?

The blue bag was taken from my side, from it I procured a single orb which likely held within it technology more advanced than anything I had encountered thus far, then poked the small brown Pokemon with its tip, catching the bunny in a stream of red and white light that pulled it in.

The ball shook once, twice, thrice then clicked the tune of confirmation. Apparently, the Buneary had been beaten down so hard it couldn't even resist being captured.

I'm not sure how to feel about that.

I put the bag back were it was before, having it clip to my side like something hanging on a belt.

And then I felt, more than heard the shaking. Panicked, I turned towards the source. My eyes widened as I looked upon a tide of living stone crashing through the forest, some of the trees even broke under the tide, crushing some of the living stones only to be lifted back up and smashed into splinters by a quartet of rocky fists.

Coming right towards me was a swarm of Geodude, all of them looking even more pissed than the last.

There were no words, I returned Blossom knowing she wouldn't be able to run fast enough to get away and then ran myself, as fast as I could away from the stone tide, sprinting around trees as I heard the thuds and crashes of even more Geodude behind me.

In my panic, I hadn't thought about trying to go in any direction but forward, like when stuck in a current, this was a mistake as the large boulder that smashed through the ranks of the stone tide showed when it went straight for me without any other explanation apart from 'it was there', then spontaneously grew four arms, using one of its larger limbs to grasp me by the 'neck' of my armour and pull me back to stare at it's pointed, rocky face.

I was barely aware at the back of my mind that the stream of Geodude was parting around this thing like Moses parted the red sea.

I nearly screamed as I stared at it's ugly face, one made of a grey rock that was cracked in places. Everything about this Graveler screamed dangerous, and it was holding me by what would be my neck if he hadn't caught my armour instead.

The creature narrowed it's eyes, causing the various layers of rock to shift in interesting ways.

It was like looking at a puzzle made of rock, a weird organic-stone puzzle thats features were _made_ , _chiselled_ to express human emotion.

The creature dropped me, for a moment I thought I was free to scurry off and attempted to do so-

Only to have a rock crash into my skull, filling my ears with a loud 'crack' and filling my senses with nothing but pain, pain, and even more fucking pain.

Agonising, seering torture filled my nerves, my eyes watered and my teeth clenched like a vice, I could hear them cracking under the pressure being forced upon them.

A loud stomp, then a second.

I could barely feel or think about anything, the only thing I was capable of knowing in those few moments was a pain like no other.

A louder stomp.

Without warning, the armour covering my torso was suddenly crushed beneath the feet of a monster, turning up all my agony by a level of ten.

And then the world faded away into nothing.

[]

[ ]

[ ] **Section Break**

[ ]

[]

When my vision returned, it wasn't, to my surprise, inside a forest, but instead a room covered in and lined with grey tiles. A few stalls were set up on the side, a lavatory if I was any judge.

I'd ended up in a lavatory of all places.

And then I looked down.

I wasn't wearing any armour and my skin had became an almost sickly pale color, I could see curly bits of brown hair at the ends of my vision.

I brought my hands up to my face, then looked at my shirt.

I was me again!

I hugged myself, happy with this rather welcome surprise. Until I realised I didn't know were my Pokeballs had gone.

My frantic, panicked searching didn't go on for long, I found that my currently-in-use Pokeballs and the blue bag were lying by my feet, quickly I took one of the Pokeballs and released the creature within-

Blossom, looking rather confused and disorientated. She searched the room, somehow not seeing me straight away.

"Blossom" my actual voice came, like an old instrument one had thought lost, then found after a year to find themselves a little rusty. I wiped away the small tear that slowly trailed down my cheek.

Blossom turned to me, entering an quick pose that told me she was getting hostile.

I am a fucking idiot.

"Blossom", I hissed, keeping my voice low, "It's me..." It was only then that I realised Blossom had never been told my name, I only felt dumber afterwards.

"OK, Blossom, this is going to sound weird, but it's me, your trainer".

The Roselias eyes narrowed at that. She started to hiss as the twin roses on her arms began to glow, almost threateningly.

I'll admit, I started to panic.

Wouldn't you?

"OK um..." Ideas brain, think! Oh, there's one. "We survived those ghosts! I climbed down that cliffside with you on my back um..." I was starting to get nervous, but from the way Blossom's stance grew a bit more lax with every word I knew I was convincing her.

I think.

"We stole this!" I raised the blue bag for emphasis.

"We um... Caught the Buneary?" this appeared to be all she needed to be convinced, but she pointed on of the roses at me.

I'm pretty sure I knew what she meant.

"I don't know how it works, but I have this weird coin, when I touched it turned into someone I knew for a while, I lost it though".

She motioned towards the general area.

"Where are we?" I asked her.

She nodded.

I was either wrong the first time, or correct twice.

Still not entirely sure.

"Well, when I die I apparently don't stay dead, instead I just reapear somewhere else, and because you were in the Pokeball and the Pokeball was on me, I'm guessing you came with me" I explained as plainly as I could, I wanted to get a feeling of where I was, if I knew were I was then I could start building a plan.

Plans are good for not getting killed... again.

Wait. I can bring things with me.

That is going to be _incredibly_ useful.

Fileing that thought away for later, I turned back to my companion.

An idea entered my mind, I explained it to Blossom.

I gave Blossom the general idea, I wanted to leave the room, but return her before hand so I could look around and release her later when I was sure it was safe for her to be out.

Surprisingly, she just shook her head and hugged my leg, humming a calming tune and shivering slightly.

She wanted to stay out, alright then.

I took the blue bag, having it hang off of my belt.

Sighing, I turned to the door, letting Blossom get off my leg before I opened the only door leading out of the presumed lavatory.

I was met with the inside of... somewhere.

Boxes and crates as far as the eye could see, stacked on top of each other in rows and rows.

A warehouse?

Curious, I observed the nearest crate.

A sharp snowflake symbol adorned it's surface.

I didn't recognise the symbol.

As quietly as I could, I tried to pull off the top of the crate, wanting to see what was inside.

Blossom hummed by my side, tapping my leg as her humming slowly turned into a quiet hiss.

I turned to my companion, she let out one sharp hiss and dashed into a gap in between two crates.

I was quick to follow her and hide behind another crate, she was sensing something I was not, best to be safe instead of sorry and all that.

I finally heard it, two voices talking. Blossom had gotten the both of us out of danger for now. I tried to concentrate on the two voices, one was female, the other male. The two voices were talking about cleaning? I couldn't hear them fully, but I did hear them talking about "dust".

The way the two were speaking of it made me feel like it was a big deal, so I tried to jog my memory of any works of fiction I knew of that involved something important that went by the name of dust, or involved dust in some way.

Nothing came to mind, so I was either just not familiar enough with the setting to guess it, didn't know the setting or I just didn't have enough information.

I really hope it's the first one.

I took a quick peek, retracting my head almost immediately after seeing the two talking, they didn't seem to notice me in the shadows between the crates.

One was a man in a rather spiffy white suit, a small grey scarf around his neck and a black bowler hat atop his ginger hair, some of which was swept over his right eye, leaving only his left, dark green one exposed.

The other was a woman wearing a red dress with some golden coloured rune-like designs running up the parts of the dress that covered her arms and neck, her hair was black like a raven, a piece of it lay across one of her shoulders.

Her eyes were a striking orange, like fire.

This is what stood out the most.

One thing I didn't expect was a third woman. I didn't get a good look at her, by the time I'd noticed she was there I had pulled myself back, the only thing I saw was white, pink and brown.

I sorted the image out in my head for a moment.

She was wearing white and had a combination of brown-pink hair.

How the fuck does that work?

No matter, they looked like important people and I'm drawing blanks for all three...

I stood behind the crate, waiting for them to leave. As I waited I let my mind wander. Perhaps I was in a book? That would explain my lack of knowledge on their appearances, but it didn't help me much since I couldn't think of any ginger-haired, bowler hat-white suit wearing sons of bitches from anywhere in anything, book or no book.

I was drawing blanks for the woman in red as well.

Well shit, things just got interesting.

I don't like interesting, I don't even like peculiar, so can this please stop whatever god there is up there?

Of course, as is standard for most prayers, no response came.

Actually- considering the fact that I could end up in a world with literal Gods and Goddesses, that might not be true.

Food for thought.

Bah, that's not important.

As I heard the two walk off I shimmied my way out of the gap in the boxes, Blossom was following slowly, tense like a coiled spring ready to bounce.

I got out of the gap-

"Shit!" I screeched as, barely a foot away stood the girl in white with weird hair- I noted that it was half pink and half brown like I had thought, her eyes also being just as mismatched and the same color-, her hands folded, a brow raised and a neutral expression on her face.

Blossom was the first to react afterwards, leaping in front of me as she... absorbed more weird particles from the opponent who could very well be strong enough to kill us both.

Or weaker than a box of tissues.

I fucking hate not knowing who people are.

She barely flinched at the attack, an umbrella I hadn't seen before was almost hit Blossom before I returned her, dropping her Pokeball in the blue bag as I sprinted as far the fuck away as I could-

Something slammed into my head, causing me to fall straight onto the floor and turning the world black.


	10. Chapter 9

My eyes weren't open, but I was awake.

A door closing and the sound of footsteps.

I tried to get up- and was stopped by something holding me down.

I opened my eyes, staring down for a moment, I admired the craftsmanship of the binding on my arms attaching them to the back of the wooden chair, placed in the middle of a small room filled with boxes, lots and lots of boxes.

It has come to my attention, that I may be deeply boned.

I'm stuck in a place I don't know anything about and bound to a chair, the bonds themselves seem rather tight as well so it doesn't appear like trying to wiggle out of the binds is going to be doing me any favours.

I'm getting burns on my wrist just from trying.

For some reason the person who tied me to this chair, likely that girl with the weird, demented hair and matching eyes, had left my belongings in the room.

I could see the plastic bag just out of my reach of my unbound feet, frustratingly close yet so far away. Why did she not bind my feet as well?

Was she just _asking_ for me to escape?

The only thing I got from trying to bring myself closer to the bag was almost kicking the chair and myself onto the floor.

Alright, so I have to think, how can I escape from here cause' I sure as hell am not staying in this shithole for any extended length of time.

Then an idea came to me, a simple one that should have been the first thing that came to mind.

It took me five minutes to realise that the bag holding my one Pokemon (and a violent Buneary which I don't know the allegiance of yet) wasn't clipped at the top or anything.

Whoever that person that bound me was was either unaware of my capabilities or incredibly stupid.

I'm going with stupid.

It took a while, but I did eventually manage to pull out a loose Pokeball. I was actually hesitant to open it, if it was that Buneary then I would be helpless, on the other hand it had no idea who I was and might be willing to help me if I give it reason.

Like the fact that we were both trapped here and being with me had less a chance of both of us getting caught, some bullshit like that.

Or it might still try to eat my face, either option is likely.

If it was Blossom then I don't know what she could do to help me, but I would damn well see what I could work with.

With my right shoe I attempted to prop the incredibly advanced storage device up, when I had done so sufficiently, I used my other foot to press upon the button that would release my Pokemon.

The capsule opened, emitting a loud, high-pitched drone that slowly calmed down as it clicked back together.

Not the right one.

I frowned, then used awesome movement to get another one and open that one.

This was the correct one this time.

The capsule was ripped open from the inside as the beam of light tore forth like thunder, emitting a loud 'pop' and a high-pitched 'shhhh' like sound until it fizzled away into nothing.

After the beam of light reformed into the shape of Blossom I let go of a breath I didn't even know I was holding.

"Blossom, can you do anything to cut the ropes on my arm and not me?" I asked her, slightly nervous.

She _needs_ to have something.

She frowned as she tilted her head to look at the ropes- a single rose petal out.

I wondered what she was doing for a second, then stopped when I saw the green particles that lazily drifted towards the red rose of her right hand. The amount was much less than I'd ever seen from the attack I was guessing was either Absorb or Mega Drain, which one I didn't know however.

She was weakening the ropes if I was any guess.

I tried pulling against the ropes.

No dice.

"That didn't work, any other ideas?" I asked her.

She placed her left arm (blue rose) against her chin in a perfect "thinker pose" and began humming lightly. After a moment or two she shoved her hand in the air and jumped, an idea had clearly come to her.

"So, what's the plan?" I asked her, a little nervous.

What I saw, however, shocked me completely.

Her red rose arm began to shimmer, not much unlike when she had gone through evolution, but it was tinted a light tinted lime green instead of the blinding white. When the green faded I could swear she had gotten... taller? She'd gotten bigger in some way, but the most prominent thing was her red rose hand.

The petals themselves had sharpened to a ridiculous degree and small thorns had begun protruding from the stem that was her arm, not that much, but both looked dangerous and sharp.

I realised her intention almost immediately afterwards.

It was genius!

"Blossom, when this is over I'm getting you something nice".

A small hum was her response.

Perhaps she was saying "I'll hold you to that", perhaps she was saying "Shut up and let me concentrate".

I can't speak Pokemon, why ask me?

She shuffled towards the back of the chair and began to saw against the ropes with the end of her 'hand'.

I pulled against the rope, feeling it pull apart slightly as I did so.

I ceased immediately after Blossom hissed at me.

Probably not the wisest of ideas.

She was slowly but surely cutting through the rope. I hummed impatiently, unable to see her progress.

So, when I was free there were two options, I could either run and have Blossom sat on my shoulder or something that allows her to help me during my- our escape from here.

Option two was putting her in the ball and just booking it- something that I actually doubted might work. My reasoning being that if Blossom could help me then any possible 'mooks' found along the way could be-

Blossom hissed, breaking me from my thoughts. I tore at my restraints, breaking through the last significantly weakened strands of rope and immediately grabbing the blue bag and standing up, taking a quick look of the room.

One exit, no windows or anything else to hide behind considering how bare the room was.

"Blossom, let's go". I told her simply as I cracked open the door and peeked through the gap.

A clear hallway greeted me, Blossom nudged against my leg as I pushed through the door, being careful to not make a sound in case someone was around to hear me.

The walls were mostly grey and bare except for the odd symbol of a red bear head and a just as red slash going through the head emblazoned on a black or white background.

For now I'll label these as 'Red Bears'.

I continued to sort-of-run but sort-of-sneak through the hallway until I found a turning point, one I peeked my head over to check for danger.

A man wearing a white mask and white clothes, apart from that all I could tell was his skin complexion -tan as fuck if you were curious- and the fact that he was holding a weapon, to be more specific something that looked like a _fucking SMG_!

Fuck that noise with a chainsaw.

I was lucky in that he had been going the other way, if he was coming this way my lungs could very well be having a little holes problem, or a major holes problem.

Probably the second one.

"Blossom, they have guns. I don't know why this surprises me, but they have guns".

Blossom growled lightly at this and began to turn the corner, only stopping when I beat her to it and peeked into the hallway. After observing to make sure the coast was clear, I entered the hallway.

Eventually I found the door on my right, it had been the first thing I'd seen upon turning the corridor that may have led to my freedom.

I was horribly, horribly mistaken.

Like, if you had to rate it on a scale of one to ten?

Negative ten.

When I opened that door you know what I found?

A gathering of people (all in the same white masks) standing in chairs around a podium set up in a typical lecture hall setup with a main man on the podium speaking about something I didn't get to hear before I entered.

On the blackboard behind him (because of course there was one) there were drawings of various mechanical pieces for what I would guess was a gun.

They all wore masks, they were listening to this dude talk about guns and the guy who was guarding earlier had an SMG.

I was in some deep shit right here.

Unfortunately for me, the door being opened was squeaky as shit.

I entered and the room fell silent, everyone in the room turning their heads to me.

"Shit".

The room burst into uproar as I slammed the door behind me and sprinted like a motherfucker away from that pile of _fuck-that-noise-with-a-shovel_.

I barely got a few meters from the door when it burst open, people with masks came pouring out like the breaking of a dam, hell it _was_ a broken dam.

The only thing that saved me and Blossom (who had been placed upon my shoulder during my mad dash away) from being caught was the crowd working against itself as they burst outwards and stumbled over each other in their pursuit to catch me.

I was not a fit individual, I never had been and probably wouldn't start anytime soon.

These guys though? I'm pretty sure if you took three of me and added all their strength, speed and the like together you wouldn't even get half of the weakest in the group that were trailing me and my shoulder companion Blossom.

There was only two reasons they hadn't caught me yet, the first was the clusterfuck they created when they all attempted to barge through the door after me, the second was Blossom constantly casting either Absorb or Mega Drain (still not sure which) on them as I ran, casting that same green light on herself as well as we ran (I think it's Growth now that I think about it, it would make sense).

Growth increased the special attack stat of the Pokemon using it (and apparently allowed them to enhance themselves physically in some way if what Blossom did to her arm earlier was any clue) , Mega Drain/Absorb is a special attack, so it would be strengthened by Growth logically.

Considering that after turning back a few times greeted me to the sight of some of them literally bowling over and falling onto the floor after Blossom absorbed them later into the run only enforced this belief.

I turned another corner, sprinting for all my worth as the last few of the men and women wearing white masks and 'Red Bear' symbols on their back that were following me continued in their pursuit.

A quick check at the remaining people following me gave me this much- two woman and five men as well as the colors red (a man and two women with this hair color from what I could see), yellow (a mans hair) and black (the last three mens hair as far as I could tell, could just as easily been dark brown).

Blossom was taking quick care of them however, so I went back to making sure I didn't trip and looked forward, turning at just the right time to not trip when I realised that a turn had snuck up on me because of my lack of common sense.

Always look forward when running- unless you're looking to smack into something.

So far I'd say it had been only a minute and a half, and only now had the alarm system started to caw its evil noise, one that made me wince almost on principle as it pierced my hearing and mind like a knife. I continued to run and search, hoping for an exit-

Blossom hissed and I suddenly found myself without a leg to stand on, not as in it was gone or anything, just that some smart arse had pushed my leg out-of-the-way and caused me to trip.

I hissed as my unprotected arms skid across the metal floor. In an instant I was scrabbling to my feet as Blossom got back onto hers, continuing to cast her Absorb/Mega Drain towards someone I couldn't see as I went to grab her-

Only for my body to be flung back as something grasped onto my arm and pulled me back as roughly as one possibly could, causing me to land face first at the boots of one of my pursuers.

Whoever it was pulled my arms behind my back before I could move them out of the way and stamped her foot down on them, sending burning pain through my arms.

I struggled and screamed against the restraint of my captor to no avail as something green flashed by my head like a grasshopper- only to be flung back by something I couldn't see.

"You fucker!"

Growling angrily I looked up, trying to stare into the four black gaps in her mask that represented the persons eyes.

She looked back, mouth thin and straight.

Her face betrayed no emotion behind what little of it I could see.

This only made me even more pissed off.

I glared as hard as I could, imparting as much anger as possible through my burning gaze.

"Only cowards wear masks". I hissed at her, for she was a she, her physique attested to that.

She frowned, her mouth the only thing exposed from the mask.

Her mouth opened-

She'd forgotten about Blossom.

Suddenly, greenish-yellow particles were torn from her at double the speed they were normally, causing her to suddenly freeze up and fall over, landing on me.

She wasn't holding me down, leaving me free to throw her off of me and get back up to run.

When I turned back to Blossom I was surprised- Her entire body had grown to twice it's usual size, her twin flowers more resembling knives because of their sharpness than actual roses.

The bud on her head was covered in even more thorns.

She hadn't evolved or anything, she had just used Growth a shit tonne.

That's my best guess anyway, it seemed correct.

I picked her up, the thorns receding beneath her flesh as my skin neared them, allowing me to place her slightly heavier form on my shoulder as I started running again, this time without pursuers.

And then _she_ appeared.

"Oh for fucks sake!" I screamed at the girl with pink-brown hair and a white uniform just... I have no words for it but "appeared" because that's what she did, one moment nothing the next I'm nearly running into a candy coloured midget.

Blossom hissed at her, I noted that it was a lot more snake-like in tone than it had been before.

Probably a result of Growth spam.

This only seemed to amuse her as she tipped her umbrella back, opened it then began twirling it, he free hand coming up to form a 'come hither' gesture while her mouth did that fucking grin, that arrogant sneer.

I did not like it one bit, I did not want to be a part of this _bullshit_.

"You listen here bitch", I brought my right hand up and pointed my finger in her face, in the back of my mind knowing that I was just digging myself an even bigger hole bit just not caring, "I have had it up to here", I placed the hand that had moments ago been pointing at her as high as I could to emphasize my point, "With this shit, I am sick and tired of it. I am leaving here dead or alive and you are not stopping me!" Knowing that you can't die is always _**fun**_ for this sort of situation.

It's not necessarily good for your self-preservation if you're me though.

Her smirk had fallen into the place of a frown.

Welp, in for a penny in for a pound as they say.

"Mega Drain!" I hissed, pointing at the newly dubbed Candy Midget, unable to do much else except prepare.

It was too fast to comprehend.

I was on the floor, a massive headache seemingly burning me alive as Blossoms screeches tore right through me.

They were screeches of pain.

I got up onto my feet and shouted, no words, nothing vocalised but pure, unadulterated _**anger**_.

I turned to the Candy Midget and ran, Blossom was hanging off of the end of her umbrella, moving and hissing in agony as she continued to Mega Drain/Absorb her. She was apparently healing herself while life fluids poured from her chest, green liquid much like paste from a crushed plant.

It angered me beyond comprehension, I harnessed this anger and punched the Candy Midget in the back of the head with my fist crunched like a vice-

She shattered into pieces, I could just see Blossom falling from what had once been the Candy Midget, then pain, pain as something smashed into the side of my head and sent me sprawling onto the floor on my side.

'Ow' I thought to myself, unable to think much else in the maelstrom of suffering I was currently experiencing, my righteous anger fading into a ball of agony.

I opened my eyes, hissing in pain and glared at her, even with how blurry my vision had become I could see that smile that I wanted nothing more than to erase in that moment.

My anger faded completely as the headache got worse.

Something fell over my head and began muttering soothing sounds above me and glowing a softish green.

I went unconscious soon after, the last thing I saw being the green tinted Candy Midget walking towards me, the last thing I heard was a exhaling Roselia.

She didn't inhale.

[]

[ ]

[ ] **Section Break**

[ ]

[]

I awoke again in a room, the walls grey and bare as far as I can tell, my vision was too obscured by the _fucking torch being shone in my face_.

I could barely see out of my left eye- I think a bandage was covering it, that or I was blind- and the right was being blinded with light.

I closed it, not wanting to damage my only apparently working eye.

Both my mind and memory was fuzzy- I knew there was _something_ that need my attention.

I just couldn't remember what, or where I was for that matter.

"Well shit" I muttered, unable to really do much else in my current situation.

"Ah, so he finally awakes!" A voice comes from nowhere, then him, a silhouette, all I'm able to make out is a flash of orange and white with a vague human appearance.

And then it all came back and I remembered just what had happened and where I was.

"..." I refused to speak, settling for glaring towards the silhouette of the man, his voice is so familiar yet I couldn't quite place from where I've heard it before...

Oh, it was the man talking to the lady in the dress near the crates.

Fuck, I thought I might have had the world pinned down, instead all I have is another fucking mystery.

"Who are you boy?" He asked, probing for information.

Funny, I wanted to ask him the same thing.

I was pretty sure he wouldn't answer honestly though.

"I'm Jack". It was simple, no explanation, just a name.

He frowned at that, then asked "Ok then Jack, how did you get here?"

I glared at him even harder, refusing to answer.

"Kid, how did you get here?" He repeated. I could hear his foot tapping.

"I died". It was technically the truth.

He laughed openly at that, a chuckle that sent shivers down my spin.

"Well let me put it this way boy,", the figure put his face forward, his one, green eye stared into mine and pierced through them like a rapier, the other covered by a lock of orange hair, "Do you want to see your friend again?"

That a got a reaction out of me.

"If you hurt her _**I will end you**_ " It was a simple statement, one that conveyed all of my anger in one simple sentence.

Apparently he seemed to find it cute.

I continued to simmer in my anger.

"Well, I doubt that very much, however I do want to know, how ever did you get here?", he was humming in apparent thought.

I was reluctant to speak, but at this point I had nothing to lose.

"I died, it's what I do. I die, then I come back somewhere else". the Clockwork Orange reject appeared to do a double take at that, almost coughing at the explanation.

"Well, that's certainly interesting kid", he spoke with a hint of arrogance that only made me want to punch him even more, "luckily for you", the light was turned off in favour of one on the ceiling, allowing me to see without being blinded (even if I still had to deal with the 'eye burn'). He took the cigarette from his mouth and stubbed it out on the table. ,"I am in need of... Some extra hands, and you happen to seem like someone who'd be willing to be one of those hands".

The fucker had the nerve to smirk at me.

I hate him already.

"And what exactly do I get to gain from helping you?" I hissed back, struggling against my binds so I could get a chance at this fucker.

He paused for a moment, pretending to be in deep contemplation.

I knew his answer before he even spoke.

Hell, I knew his answer before I had even asked.

"Well, I did say you might be seeing your friend again... maybe that could be your prize?"

The smile he took on after saying that oozed confidence in excess.

I hated it, I _**hated**_ him.

"...Fine". I spoke reluctantly, I didn't trust him as far as I could throw him and I was not a strong individual, not at all.

"The fucker patted me on the back "That's the spirit kid! Well, introductions".

My binds came undone almost immediately, the Candy Midget stood by his side, bowing lightly.

Cheeky bitch.

"I am Roman Torchwick, criminal extraordinare", he gestured flamboyantly towards himself, then towards his midget companion ,"and this is Neo".

It came from my mouth before I could even stop it, I was too tired and angry to catch myself.

"Huh, I've just been calling her Candy Midget".

Silence.

And that's the story of how I got slapped in the face with an umbrella by someone who barely made it to the top half of my torso in height.

It stung, a lot.

Torchwick appeared to be holding back laughter, Candy Midg- _Neo_ was giving him a dirty look.

After composing himself, he turned back to me.

"Ok, word from the wise kid, don't insult a woman who you know is stronger than you, actually, don't do that in general, it's bad form". He straightened his suit, turning away from me, taking a cigar from one of his pockets and lighting it with a red coloured lighter, he then turned back to me as he smoked on it, leaning on his little cane as he did so.

He waved me off, then spoke again.

"Neo has volunteered to take you to where you will be sleeping for the night, we wont be needing you untill tomorrow after all".

The look C- _Neo_ was giving him suggested that she had, in fact, not volunteered to take me anywhere.

Or she had and didn't want me knowing about it, which I doubted and seriously hoped was not the case because otherwise I was going to need a sanity check.

And a lot of brain bleach.

The thought sickens me.

I grunted and followed her out of them room, towards the room I'd apparently be staying at.

[]

[ ]

[ ] **Section Break**

[ ]

[]

The room was simple, a bed and a bookshelf with two doors and barely enough room to move apart from that.

Its simplicity was something I didn't really care about.

Neo followed me in, closing the door behind her as she took something from behind her.

My bag.

She threw it to me, I grabbed it, searching through everything and finding something strange.

She hadn't taken any of the Pokeballs from the bag I looked back up and-

She was gone.

Ok then.

I clicked each Pokeball until I got to what I hoped was Blossom- but turned out to be the Buneary, I let it free onto the bed and stared at the sleeping brown thing, placing it on my lap and petting it almost as an instinctual response.

Surprisingly, the little bugger seemed fine with that and burrowed into my lap, curling in on itself as it did so.

A brief look at the rabbit had shown me that it wasn't exactly as I remembered a Buneary to be- it's fur was a darker brown than I thought it would be and the fluff that covered it's ears and stomach was far rougher and darker than the creamy color I remember Buneary having.

Was I remembering it wrong? If so then that would be a shame, but if I was correct and this Buneary wasn't normal? Maybe it was a shiny? Yeah, that would explain it, I don't actually know what a shiny Buneary looks like so it could very much be that.

Mystery solved, I put her back into the ball and let loose with the last pokeball...

It opened, wriggled for a moment, then just closed.

That didn't look good.

That... I couldn't exactly not listen to them now... Sighing, I returned the Buneary into the Pokeball, placed it back into the blue bag and, without removing my clothing because of just how damn tired I was, went to bed and slept with the blue plastic bag and it's contents by my side as I slept a dreamless sleep.


	11. Interlude Two

Russet was never the greatest, she wasn't the nicest, neither was she the best looking.

But she knew damn well how to fight people- this many could attest to after trying to mug her and her friends during the weekly pub crawl she'd used to have with them before she joined the Fang- probably a mistake in hindsight, but she couldn't exactly turn back now.

She'd been here for the last three years, she couldn't exactly change that now could she? You just _don't_ leave somewhere like that, it just isn't done.

But that has only vaguely something to do with what she was doing now, what was she doing?

Listening to someone instructing her and an entire room of White Fang members on how to arm bombs.

She already knew, but a reminder was always nice.

The man on the podium -Mint Sanders if the board by his side was to be believed- started to move on to a new subject, gun maintenance, then was interrupted by a loud squeak.

Nearly the entire room -Mint included- turned to the door.

A man who couldn't be any older than his late teens, it was only after the few seconds of silence she noticed the green thing by his side.

It was small, it's most prominent features being the three spike-like protrusions on it's head and the roses on its hands.

How interesting.

The important part was he was definitely not a member of the White Fang and looked nothing like a Faunus.

"Shit".

Well, she wouldn't have been able to say it any better in his position.

The room turned into a maelstrom of white and grey movement as the better half of everyone in the room arose from their chairs and started to scrabble towards the boy, out for blood.

That was what a depressing majority of recruits were like sometimes.

Then again, with the way things were going it wasn't exactly _unexpected_.

She waited for the rooms exit to clear before leaving at a sprint.

It didn't take long for her to realise who was following her.

"Well hello sweet cheeks!" came the most aggravating voice she had ever heard in the history of her life and hoped would just die, leave or just cease to exist entirely.

Either option was fine by her.

"Gren, shut up" was the only response she could think of.

The git stressed her out _very_ easily- it was like his entire reason for _existing_ was to push her buttons!

Gren quickly wiped some hair out-of-the-way of his amber eye, the entire mop on his head that was his hair threw itself back as he chuckled, full of mirth.

She did her best to ignore his inane rambling as they both continued to run towards the crowd.

Russet found herself in for a surprise when she turned the corner.

There were a lot of bodies just laying around.

Her face hardened, quite a few of them didn't look like they were breathing.

The pile just kept growing and growing, at some point Gren had been left behind, he was probably doing something to help the wounded.

That doesn't matter right now.

She ran as fast as she could, following the trail of bodies until she found the few that remained running, only six, they were dropping when the plant monster thing on the running mans back absorbed? Sucked in? It was doing something weird, it was pulling yellow orbs of light from the ones following him.

When the orbs left them they just collapsed.

'What type of semblance is that?' she mused, uncertain about engaging, then steeling herself as she got her chance.

Roughly, in the back of her head, she realised that the alarm had gone off.

None of those in pursuit remained standing anymore.

Russet activated her Semblance, the steel below her stretched out like a springboard and threw her forward.

Her Semblance was simple, it allowed her to take a 'grip' of a material in an area and shape it to her will, interacting with it, using it as obstructions or extra platforms.

Once, she'd even used it to scale an office building.

But using her Semblance on too much material or on something too far away tended to strain her or just tire her out too much to properly use.

Knowing this, Russet had began to use her Semblance more as a weapon of engagement or binding in combat, something to distract a foe or inconvenience them.

It was also great for escapes.

Russet, close enough to the man and the plant monster to activate her Semblance safely, 'gripped' a piece of the steel floor and used it to trip the man up, sending his monster hissing and flying off of his shoulder.

She took her advantage, everything around her just sort of turned into a haze as she took the mans arm and shoved it behind his back.

The plant monster leaped into her field of view, almost immediately she 'gripped' a bit of the wall and slammed it against the beast, sending it careening back into another wall, hissing all the way.

" _ **You Fucker**_!" came a loud voice from below her, startling her as she turned to the man.

'His eyes... that can _not_ be natural' she thought to herself as the twin, glowing green orbs stared into her soul.

"Only cowards wear masks" came his voice, not exactly calm, but far less venomous or evil sounding.

The thoughts that the sentence conjured forth though... they gave her pause.

She frowned at him, about to open her mouth to tell him to shut up, only for it to not come.

All she saw was black.

[]

[ ]

[ ] **Section Break**

[ ]

[]

I awoke in a medical bed, a wet towel placed on my head and a minor headache blazing a trail of mayhem through my brain.

"Did anyone get the name of that truck?". I asked no one in particular- only to get an answer from an unlikely source.

Gren's voice and face showed concern as he popped into her vision, his mask off allowing his rather large, grey and droopy extra dog ears to hang over his face like twin spades.

"Hello, Russet. Here, have this". His voice was shaky, a little panicked as he forced some gruel into my face, waiting for me to take it from him.

I obliged, only feeling how _famished_ I was after I had already begun eating.

"So", I asked between my rapid consumption of the oaty meal, "what happened?"

He paused for a moment, seemingly unsure of how to respond.

"Um well", he paused for a moment, sighing, "The... human, went through the base running, when we gathered the bodies of those his... _pet_ ", he said the word with distaste, as if it was the elusive pebble that had been stuck between his shoe and toe for the last month, "effected, we found most of them living and well after rest but..." He had gone quiet, no you _don't_ do that to me Gren, stop!

"But what Gren?" I made sure to convey how little I wanted bullshit from him at that moment.

"Over ten percent of the new recruits died today Russet... I just, I don't know how else to tell you". He was saddened by this, I could tell from the way his ears drooped in that way they always did and the dip in his lip.

"Wow. That's... ". I said, not having anything else to say from the shock.

There were around fifty recruit today so more than five had died from that madman's rampage.

"Well, at least you're still here, that's all that matter right now". He said, patting my back as he did so.

He didn't look happy, not at all.

"There's something you're not telling me Gren". I could see it in the way he fidgeted, he was never a good liar.

"Coral was one of the ones that died".

Oh.

Oh my god.

Coral was his little sister, she had been determined to join the Fang ever since he had... He looked like a kicked puppy.

That man...

"Is he dead?" I asked, feeling very, _very_ ang- yeah, no this isn't anger, this is _**fucking rage**_.

"No, Roman's gone and picked him up, there isn't really anything we can do to him now".

The downtrodden way he said it... he just seemed so lost.

I don't like that one bit.

I pulled him in for a hug, stroking his hair as he just broke down.

"I'm telling you now, I will do something about this. I don't care if Roman has taken him as his own little toy, I don't care if the fucking council of vale decides he's a fucking saint, I will get him, do you hear me?"

Gren said nothing, he only hugged harder.

I will come for you boy, and when I do you better be ready because when I do not even the gods will be able to stop me.

No one gets to hurt my friends.

No one.


	12. Chapter 10

I awoke, head aching as if I'd just been thrown through a psychic blender head first.

Groggily, I took the quilt covering me and shoved it off. I'm a peaceful sleeper- I move rarely in my sleep.

Unless I happen to be worried about something.

I can tell that my sleep wasn't peaceful even if I don't remember it.

My proof? The condition of the bed, the quilt that was chaotically strangling the life out of my right leg and my stomach.

I had not slept peacefully _at all_.

Untangling the quilt from my body had mentally tasked me enough that my mind had waked up a little.

I just shoved the quilt off of the bed, leaving it on the floor.

It seems rebellion, no matter how immature, was fair game for me.

I must be more tired than I thought.

I decided to check what I still had, so I took the blue bag that had fallen off of my bed during my sleep and poured it's contents on the white sheet covering the mattress of the bed I had slept on.

Carefully, I organised what I had in piles of what each thing was.

Six Pokeballs, three Oran berries, an Ether (What would that even be used for? What does PP translate to in reality? More thoughts for later) and three potions.

Several useful items...

For a Pokemon.

Not for me.

I looked around in the small room I had been 'assigned' to for slumber, two doors and no windows, a table in the corner with a chair beneath it and a bed.

Pretty plain, but understandable.

Sighing, I got off of the bed. Stretching, I walked to the second door, the first being the one I had entered in from last night.

I took the bag of my shit with me, just in case.

Inside was a toilet, bath, bath _mirror_ and the assorted items you'd find on a bathroom sink (a toothbrush, some toothpaste, soap and a wash cloth).

I don't think I need to describe going through the daily motions- brush your teeth and all that-, but what I will say is after so long without one, a bath is heavenly.

When I was done I put on the same old clothes, not really having much of a choice in the matter, and picked up my things.

I left the bathroom to find Neo sitting on the oak(?) table and doing something with a phone.

Probably just texting, or spying on me.

I'm not sure which is more suspicious.

What _is_ suspicious is how she knew I was awake.

I tried not to think about it.

I coughed lightly, making a show of doing so, waiting for Neo to tell me why she was here.

Her only response was putting up a hand, the universal symbol of 'calm the fuck down and stop'.

I was unamused.

Huffing and glaring was either not a very nice look for me, or it annoyed her because the second she looked at me she frowned and 'tapped' me on the nose.

I say tapped, but really it was more like a shove that sent me right back onto the bed and I'm pretty sure broke my nose.

Thankfully, after a quick check, my nose wasn't bleeding.

Only sore as fuck.

" _ **Fuck**_ _you_ ". I hissed, cradling my face as I tried -and failed- to glare at her while pushing every bit of anger I possible could through it.

She just smirked.

I hate her, I hate her so much.

When my face stopped being so sore, I got back up. After watching me get up, still rubbing my nose cause that shit was still not painless, it was fucking _**ow**_ incarnate. Neo opened the door and left.

Quickly I gathered my one belonging, a blue bag containing some shit, and left to follow her.

[]

[ ]

[ ] **Section Break**

[ ]

[]

Walking through the... base? I guess that's what this is. Yeah, walking through this base wasn't a pleasant experience.

Too many people staring at me from behind their white masks.

Know that I could actually observe them without running like fuck, I noticed that most of their masks had an animal motif going on.

Nice.

I suspected that their staring wasn't curiosity, but instead glares of hate, but I wasn't actually able to confirm that.

The joys of anonymity!

It didn't take long for me to see where I was being led. Rubbing my groggy eyes, I looked around. I had been led to a rather big room with a large thing I presumed to be aircraft laying in the middle, from what I saw it looked like the kind of aircraft that goes up before moving anywhere else, if I was remembering it right the term was VTOL.

Probably wrong there, but I couldn't muster the fucks to give a shit with both how tired I still was and how frustrated I was.

The pain in my nose had faded a bit, so at least I had that going for me.

I pointed at the thing, then was surprised when my mental question was answered by -guess _who_?- Roman _fucking_ Torchwick.

Still hate him more than a lemon squirt to the eye, but that's besides the point.

"That, my friend", he gripped my shoulder like he was my father or something, the thought only annoyed me even more and filled me with a little melancholy, "Is a Bullhead. Now", he took his hand off me and brandished his cane towards a door on the other side of the hanger, "we still have a few hours till launch, so I need you to go put on something _presentable_ for when we go, seriously, look at yourself! I've had something arranged for you."

Wishing he would shut up, I shuffled out of the room, the lack of food was something that was only aggravating me as much as weakening me.

And then my stomach started grumbling.

For fucks sake.

I opened the door and was greeted by a masked man who, almost immediately, shoved a black suit in my arms and just left without a word.

Rude son of a bitch.

Ignoring the mans behaviour, I took the suit and, after checking for any cameras or prying eyes, just in case, stripped and put on the suit.

It was a simple thing, a black suit with a white shirt and collar as well as a black tie.

It was the thing you gave a businessman for a meeting that you only just found out about last week, simple but smart.

I felt sobered up a little just from wearing it, it was a strange effect. I checked a mirror, adjusting the tie a little before finally being content. After fixing my tie, I folded the clothes Maki had gotten for me and place them in the bag, making sure to put the berries and potions over it while leaving the Pokeballs beneath it for the sake of hiding them, even if it was rather pointless.

I wasn't an idiot, I was aware that they'd likely already checked my shit.

I went back into the hangar, the bag in my hand as I entered.

No fanfare or anything, just some nameless masked man who shall now be labelled Mook One telling me to "follow him and not do any funny business".

It's not like I had a choice, if I did attempt any "funny business" they'd either kill me or her.

All things considered, it was probably going to be both if I did something wrong. I was clay in that arrogant bastard Torchwicks hands and there was fuck all I could do about it.

I didn't know where he was keeping Blossom, I couldn't get her and escape.

I would have to do what he says if I wanted to see her again.

Mook One and I arrived at the place that I was apparently needed.

It was another hangar-like area, except instead of a 'Bullhead' there was some weird, _really_ big van.

Like, _mammoth_ in size.

Torchwick, the man who I probably hated the most here (except maybe Neo, not sure who I hate more), came out of nowhere and promptly forced me into the back of the van with his cane.

Not really in a position to argue, I got in and strapped into one of the grey seats in it's back only to find that the thing was apparently _soundproofed_.

Then the engine started up, it was the last thing I heard for what felt like the better half of the _fucking day_.

[]

[ ]

[ ] **Section Break**

[ ]

[]

At some point, I had fallen asleep in the van.

I know this because I awoke to Neo slapping me in the face.

"The fuck!?" I hissed, more out of confusion than actual anger.

"Kid, we're here".

For once Roman's voice wasn't aggravating me.

I unbuckled my seat belt and picked up the blue bag that had fallen to the floor in my sleep.

"Hey kid, Why'd you bring that?" He asked, pointing at my bag as if I was an idiot who couldn't understand a simple fucking question!

Yep, still hated him.

"Did you plan on taking me back to your little base camp carrot top?" I asked back, injecting as much venom as I could into my words.

He frowned a little, before rolling his eyes and then replying with the tone of a man explaining something to someone who doesn't know any better.

"Well kid, there wasn't going to be a plan like that, I was just curious".

Yep, fucking hate him.

Wait, was he being sarcastic or?

I don't even know.

I grumbled as I followed him, a check of my surroundings telling me little apart from the fact that it was a forest, little else.

Torchwick and Neo weren't necessarily on edge, but they were a little wary. While they were busy leading me to... where ever it was we were going, I looked up.

I have never feared the night sky so much.

When I looked up, it was to a shattered moon, not as in it was cracked or anything, but _pieces of it were floating near the impact zone of whatever had fucking shattered the damn thing_.

I stopped looking at the sky almost immediately.

I... didn't want to think about it.

'Out of sight out of mind, out of sight out of mind' I chanted mentally as I followed Neo and Torchwick on autopilot.

What the fuck could shatter the _moon_?

Magic? Accidental missile? Super Villains gambit? Dr Evil?

Wait, last two were pretty much the same.

Well, either way, the only thing I got from that was I really did not know the setting, _at all_.

Shattered moon? Nothing came to mind for a setting with one.

It scared me, it scared me to not know anything about where I was. The only difference now between how I was minutes ago is that I now know that I know nothing, before I only suspected it.

There's a difference between knowing and _knowing_ after all.

I now _knew_ without a doubt I was in a foreign setting, a truly foreign world that I knew _nothing_ about.

The prospect was both a scary and exciting one.

After recovering a little more from my small panic attack, I realised that we had arrived, or at least I think we had, at the place.

It was a wall, a really fuck-off huge one that stretched higher than I could see.

"Where the fuck are we?"

Roman turned to me, his cane was thrust into the sky as he spoke.

"This is one of the many walls of Vale, we are going to be scaling it today!"

Wait, what does he mean by scale?

Neo was suddenly walking beside me, a mischievous grin on her face that left me feeling very suspicious and more than a little scared.

"What do you mean 'scale'?" I asked, attempting to steady my voice.

When I turned to Roman he was attempting to stifle his own laughter, a hook in hand.

There was also a hook in Neo's hand, when I followed the ropes following both I found that they led up, and that a line of rope was hanging above me.

I had moments to look at my torso, finding a leather band-like thing covering it, before I was whipped into the air at ridiculous speed, a speed that stole my breath and voice as the world below turned into a grey blur.

I felt like I couldn't breathe- My chest was being crushed-

Suddenly, we stopped and I was left hanging in the air by my torso, my ribs aching as I breathed in as quickly and rapidly as possible.

I was looking down, the drop was a _very_ big one.

I just stared, frozen.

I think I broke something.

It took me a while to hear that bastard laughing, my hearing had just vanished for a moment, when it came back my ears were ringing, but fading away slowly.

When I looked at Roman, his fucking laughter, I flipped him the bird and glared as hard as I could, hoping he'd get the message.

He just laughed even harder.

Prick.

While mister prick was laughing as if he didn't need to breathe, I saw Neo standing there by his side, that same arrogant sneer on her face sprinkled with amusement.

"Resisting urge to hit the Candy Bitch". I growled out, too angry to stop myself.

Surprisingly, I didn't get hit for that one.

Just a very, _very_ unhappy looking scowl thrown my way

So here I am, hanging off of some weird hook attached to a leather belt and being moved so that I could be dropped and killed without much fuss.

I really wish my mind would stop being so hyperactive.

After being brought up, we all got lowered down, before we did I got to look at Vale and the wall.

Holy Jesus Christ on a zeppelin, this place is _huge_.

I mean, I couldn't even see the end of it from here, it was just a sea of vaguely modern looking buildings, there were tubes containing what looked like trains above everything else, held up by metal poles that towered above the city itself.

I couldn't even see anything but roofs and the occasional peak at the streets below.

Why the _fuck_ is it so big?!

"Roman, over these past few hours, I have decided a few things about you, The first is I hate everything about you and what you stand for, the second is that the only exceptions are getting me the opportunity to see this and your style of clothing".

"Oh? What about my charming personality?"

My response was quick and filled with venom.

"Your personality reminds me of a cactus molded from shit and I hate you for it".

For the rest of the slow journey downwards into Vale there was silence.

[]

[ ]

[ ] **Section Break**

[ ]

[]

We had spent the few hours doing two things, the first was regrouping with the hands Torchwick was talking about, we went to this club, pretty crowded, nice place, owner was called Junior.

Music wasn't for me though.

We basically entered, took some men and split into two groups, Neo and Torchwick were apparently going to different places while I was going with Torchwick as a 'hand'.

We left the club, one of the men was carrying a suitcase by my side.

Despite Roman apparently being smart (news to me) he had decided to give me a gun.

It had a few rounds from what he told me, but I was still confused on _why_ he had given me one.

Was he durable enough to take a bullet to the face? I'd rather not find out, even with how much I hated him.

I knew nothing, for all I knew (actually, it was my leading guess) he was a mob boss or crime lord.

I have a feeling that this place isn't exactly 'normal' either.

Broken moon and massive city surrounded by fuck off massive forest? Yeah, somethings up there.

Whether what was up could make normal people extraordinary though?

Now _that_ was a good question.

We arrived a little at a place called 'From Dust Till Dawn', I wasn't going to question the name or the old man inside.

Torchwick went through a little villains speech sort of dealio, then told us to 'get the dust'.

I, unsure of what the fuck I was actually meant to be doing, copied the other guys, taking a capsule from the suitcase that had been placed on the old mans desk and bringing it to these big glass containers strapped to a wall.

The extraction process was fairly easy, the problem was turning the fucker off.

Oh, wait, it does it by itself.

Nevermind.

Job complete, I took the capsule and put it into the suitcase.

"Ok boys, it's t-" Roman was cut off when _something_ was thrown past him, nearly hitting him in the side as it crashed against a wall.

"The hell was that!" One of the hired 'hands' shouted.

Another went into the lane the guy _had been thrown out of_ and pointed a gun at something I couldn't see.

He was then out of site.

"Freeze!" Yeah, my hopes for that guys survival just dropped to nil.

I could hear some mumbling from behind the wall that blocked whoever he was talking to from site.

I wasn't going to bother trying to help this dude.

And then he was thrown through a window. When I peered outside that window? Some kid in a Victorian style dress with red being the main color and an equally red cloak behind her.

If this was a story then this would probably be the 'heroine'.

If this was the case then we were all fucked. I wasn't one to leave this sort of thing to chance.

"Torchwick, we might want to leave". I said, not looking at her as I addressed him.

He turned to me for a moment, then laughed.

"What? Scared of a little girl kid?"

Honestly, yes I was.

I tore the suitcase from the glass table.

"Yeah _, how are we_ _ **getting out of here**_?"

I think the panic in my voice had an effect on him, he was acting a bit different now.

"Ok kid, if you're really that scared of her go up there". He pointed towards a roof and the ladder going up it.

"I'll meet you up there in a bit kid".

I nodded towards him and exited the building, not wanting to draw any attention from... Red girl? Yeah, that works for now.

As I was climbing, I could hear explosions down below but decided not to see what was going on, instead focusing on moving.

I got to the top without any problems, then Torchwick's voice came from down the ladder.

"Kid, get moving!"

"Where to?!" I asked in response, getting to my feet and holding the suitcase and the blue bag in each hand as I did so.

"The Bullhead should be here soon!" He shouted back as he got onto the roof.

I beat him to the edge of the building. After placing the blue bag in the same hand as the suitcase I took the pistol he had given me earlier, pointing it towards the ladder.

Because it was the cool thing to do, Red girl flew over the roof, landing with her... ok, what the fuck is this? She was holding a scythe that was like, twice her height!

Was that a gun magazine? What the fuck!?

Ok, the people here were 'special'.

Hope she ain't bulletproof.

I found myself too stunned to actually shoot her, so I was just pointing a gun at her without actually shooting.

"Ok, seriously, what the ever-loving _christ_ is that thing!?" I asked, motioning towards her scythe-thing.

I was ignored.

"Little red, little red", Roman muttered as the Bullhead came up, I only realised it had a bit after and ended up grabbing the edge of it without being able to pull myself up.

I am a weak as shit, especially in the arms.

I couldn't pull myself up.

Roman took me by the arm and pulled me up, taking the suitcase from me as he threw a red crystal over his shoulder.

I tightened my grip on my bag, turning to look at the girl below.

I didn't understand what he was doing, too busy trying to get my balance. Then he gripped me by the shoulder.

"For what it's worth kid, I'm sorry you had to find out this way". No, bad Roman, you better not be doing what I think you're doing.

He put me in front of him, staring at me intently as he said _it_.

"Your friend is dead".

I froze.

And then I fell.

The last thing I remember seeing was something purple going right past me as I fell, fell.

Fell.

Very little thought was able to go through my mind while I went hurtling towards the ground.

It was a painless, quick death.


	13. Chapter 11

**A/N This chapter did NOT want to write itself.**

 **I went through more than three iterations of the same fucking thing before I got to something decent.**

 **Now, anyone who has read this chapter and NOT seen the Rewrites of the previous chapters, I suggest you go do so now, it's not needed, but it's new shit and a few minor things have been altered.**

 **With that out of the way, enjoy the show!**

She's... gone.

White snow, all around me.

I'm so cold.

She's dead and gone.

And It's all my fault.

My attitude- _my actions_ caused her to die, to cease to be.

So cold...

I feel numb, not just on my flesh in this blanket of white, all-covering snow- but hollow and numb inside- empty.

This is loss, I know this feeling well.

But this is _worse_ because I _know_ I could have done something about it, that I should have done something about it.

I could have returned her and let myself be captured- she wouldn't have had to fight for me then.

She wouldn't have had to die, to sacrifice herself meaninglessly.

Hollow.

Hollow and numb.

I tried to flex my fingers.

Nothing.

I can't feel anything else.

Then a spike of cold down my spine.

I don't know how long I've laid here in the snow- I don't know if I can even get up.

My legs are frozen, unable to act.

I am numb, I cannot move.

Yet I cannot find the will to care.

With the last of what will I still had, I attempt to command my legs to move.

Nothing.

Whether my body or mind is at fault I do not know.

So numb...

My mind is too dulled for complex thought.

And then I start to sleep- dead and cold in the snow.

And then I was gone.

[]

[ ]

[ ] **Section Break**

[ ]

[]

The world around me was a blur of grey as I rolled off of something green and fell onto my back, pain lancing across it from _something_ poking into it, causing me to yelp in shock more than anything actually hurting.

All thoughts of my fallen companion were drowned out in the rush of adrenaline and consciousness that struck me when I hit that dumpster, through my mind flashed thoughts most alarming and disturbing.

It occurred to me that I had died once again.

Wincing and moving on from that thought, I stroked my back around where I had hit... whatever that was.

I need to focus on the now, not the past. If I concentrate on the now, I'll accomplish more in the long run, I'll mourn and build a grave for her later, but right now...

Right now I need to gather information, where am I?

I shuffled over, taking a peek at whatever it was I'd landed on.

Just a dumpster to my right and a crushed cola can with edges made in just the right way to point into my back and pierce it, except the suit was apparently durable enough to not allow the aluminium point through.

Noting that for later.

A crushed cola can that was _right next to a fucking dumpster that smelled like shit_.

This is what I thought to myself when I looked at the green thing I'd seemingly rolled off of and fell off of upon my arrival.

I mean, you have littering, then you have this.

It was literally right next to a fucking dumpster in the middle of what looked very much like an alleyway, and was looking even more like one with the more attention I paid to it.

It takes a special kind of scumbag to do deliberately put a can so close to a fucking dumpster and _not place it in the fucking dumpster_.

I picked up the distorted can gingerly, careful not to prick myself on one of its sharpened edges.

It was squashed, a few sharp bits of metal jutted out from its sides that seemed eager for my blood.

I was quick to put it into the trash, even if only to satisfy my inner clean freak.

I left the alleyway, observing the buildings around me intently.

I realised something within those few moments- it wasn't the dumpster that smelled bad.

It was the city, it smelled horrific, like liquid rotten egg had been sprayed everywhere.

I pinched my nose, going back to observation instead of smell.

City with extra skyscrapers, somewhat dense population and the sounds of a gunfight somewhere not too far away as the background noise.

The place looks American, then again I know fuck all about the structures that other big cities have inside them, or the countries they come from.

America is the only place I know that has any buildings like this, so i'm not going to assume.

I did, however, know that I was somewhere near the ocean (I had arrived in an alleyway right next to the apparent docks, and that the city was around a bay, it's shape attested to that.

On the water I could see a large structure, but from the distance it was little more than a black speck, but it was there.

I didn't appear to be far from what looked like the city docks, it was maybe a half a mile off from where I was.

I'm shit at guessing distance though, so it could very well be an entire mile.

I don't think I'm going to like it here if I'm judging from first impressions, rephrasing that, I don't think I'm going to live long here at all.

Last I checked I'm not bulletproof, but the same goes for other people.

Or maybe that's not how it works here? The first two worlds I came to I knew pretty well, the third might exist as a fictional work and I'm just not aware of it.

I never got to properly look at the fourth did I?

Well that's shitty.

The point is, I know some of the worlds I've been to, this one might be one I know.

A _few_ things come to mind with the idea of "dirty city with docks".

Hopefully It's one I know, then I can abuse the world around me for personal gain! Yay, profit!

The problem I'll be having is that this place has gunfights, I need protection.

I just need to find a gun or sufficiently powerful weapon and get proficient with it... Somehow.

I'm British, never fired a gun in my life, apart from that one laser earlier.

But I'm pretty sure that doesn't count, it wasn't technically, actually _me_ and laser weapons don't have recoil, so it wouldn't be the same as firing a conventional firearm.

This place seemed modern, as in maybe an Earth of the 2000's- I doubted I'd find any 'advanced' technology here like in the other worlds I'd been to.

But before all that speculative bullshit, I need to figure out where I am.

I left the alleyway, observing my immediate surroundings.

...This place is _fucked_.

Straightening my features to the best of my abilities, I tried to give off a "don't fuck with me" look as I walked away from the scene.

Three kids, two that couldn't be over fourteen, a third in his later teens and a larger, older man whose exact age I couldn't pin down.

Each wore ripped and torn clothes, the larger man had substantially better looking clothing.

There were bags under their eyes.

They were all lying against the cracked wall of a decrepit old building, unconscious.

The dirty needles, their clothes, their faces and the odour told me enough.

Wherever I was, there were druggies who weren't afraid to do their practices in the open.

This both scared and annoyed me.

I was scared because this meant one of a few things: Law enforcement is shit or corrupt, beaten away from the area by what I'm guessing is gang work, or it didn't exist at all.

I don't think I need to explain how bad either of these is.

I could also be in "the bad part of town", the shitty condition of the buildings around me (dirty, cracked and downright hazardous from my own judgement) attested to that.

From the state of the houses, I'm guessing that no one was really homeless.

If you can live inside the abandoned remains of what was once a hospital, then you aren't really without a place to rest.

Considering my (subjectively) greatly dressed self, I was likely in more danger than if I was wearing 'normal' clothes, I can imagine a particularly affectionate knife in my immediate future.

That's bad.

My annoyance stemmed from an intense dislike of most drugs I had adopted from a young age, mostly formed from all the things thrown in my face when growing up about the consequences if you took them, legal and bodily.

This had later blossomed into an intense hatred.

I used to have a good friend named Ben, we would hang out, play when we were younger and battle Pokemon every so often.

He was a great friend and helped me through the tough times when my dad died.

'Used to' is the key part there.

He was quiet about his usage of the stuff- not sharing it or talking about it.

I never knew he used any of the _fucking poison_ until he overdosed one day with a suicide note being his only departing gift to the world.

He had been going through personal problems and refused to let others help him, let _me_ help him, so he escaped with _drugs_ and it killed him.

Three kids taking _that_ in the middle of the street? Without _anyone_ stopping them?

It hit me hard.

I could understand no one stopping them- I didn't want to because I didn't want to get shanked.

The neighbourhoodlooked like the kind of place that would happen, but it still pissed me off.

Destination? Hopefully the "better" part of town if there was one, I wasn't going to ask for help on finding it for obvious reasons. Instead of asking for directional help, I chose a direction -towards the centermost part of the bay where the buildings looked better- and went on my way.

[]

[ ]

[ ] **Section Break**

[ ]

[]

Surprisingly uneventful.

The walk that is.

The streets were even more broken than the structures surrounding them- cracked and covered with plants breaking through the sidewalks in a desperate attempt to drink from the golden glow of sunlight from the sun above- their efforts in vain from the clouds that had suddenly obscured it.

Somewhere along the way, it had started raining.

I was unhappy, both because of the memories it gave me of before all this shit started and because it was soaking through my suit.

Fucking rain.

Anyway, I was cold, wet and maybe halfway to where I wanted to be.

After putting my arms in my armpits in an effortless attempt to get warm, I'd found something interesting, three things actually.

Under my suit, somehow not getting my awareness before, was the gun Torchwick had given to me for... some reason.

A single clip was with it, another lay in the gun itself.

How it got there I have no idea, something to do with the jumps?

A thought for later.

In the pocket, something I'd missed was a pair of shades- the lenses black like the tie and the suit I presume it was meant to go with.

Then I'd looked at my belt.

There, hanging off of it, was my blue bag, drenched and ripped in places- holes poking through it all over.

I panicked when I looked inside, it was missing most of it's contents- all it had was two Potions and three Pokeballs.

This, understandably, that made me freak out quite a lot.

On the spot, I'd decided to go 'Fuck it' and checked each Pokeball.

Not a smart decision honestly.

The first didn't open when I clicked the button on it's front, empty was my guess.

The second _did_ open, shook, then suddenly darkened in color and shrunk into a minimised form.

I winced at the small device, placing it back into the bag.

Don't think about it.

Before I checked the third, I looked around.

No one around to watch me, I should have checked before hand, standing in the middle of the street checking pokeballs wasn't very secretive.

Looking around, I found the nearest alleyway and ducked into it.

I held the ball in a firm grip, pointing its end at a wall, then pressing the button.

It didn't open.

 _Fuck_.

I shook involuntarily, placing the ball back in the bag, wiping a tear from my eye.

It didn't even have a name, and it's gone.

Breathing deeply, I said my farewells to an innocent beast I hadn't even known for a day, I returned back to my journey, intent on finding something to help me forget-

Then I heard it.

A scream, a _cut off_ scream somewhere to my right.

Right in an alleyway.

I took out the pistol- a large blocky thing that was predominantly grey, red highlights surrounding it in places with strange light-grey tubes covering it's sides.

One clip in the gun itself, another in the pocket it was in.

I weighed my options, saving whoever it was could land me food and would make me feel better.

On the other hand, I could be killed.

How messed is it that getting killed as a consequence for trying to help someone doesn't really effect me anymore?

I ran in, the smell hit me, worse than before.

If I had to scale the smell from one to ten, my clean neighbourhood would be an eight, a swamp would be a four and the city outside of this would be a six or five.

This would be a three, maybe a low four if I was generous.

But that wasn't important, I wrinkled my nose, running in to help whoever it was that had screamed in this alleyway.

I brought up the gun, looking at the scene.

Three grown men wearing rags in the garbage filled dump and one teen shivering in fear, leaning against the wall.

His face was enough to tip me over the edge.

"Alright fuckfaces, it's time to stop!" I shouted at the top of my lungs.

They all turned to me, clearly spooked.

Dirty hair, torn rags for cloths and the clear signs of drug abuse, bloodshot eyes, sluggish movement, that sort of thing.

Then, the tallest of the bunch, stepped forward.

I pointed the pistols end roughly at him, keeping the sight aimed at his chest.

But there were two mistakes I had made.

Remember when I said I'd never fired a gun? That also meant I didn't know the proper way to hold one.

So what do you think I, a man whose best knowledge of pistols came from action movies, did?

I stood with my right leg forward, my left keeping me balanced while my right arm held the weapon without support from my left.

The weapon I was wielding wasn't weak in the knock back department and I wasn't a strong man.

See where I'm going with this?

I invoked the Firing One Handed trope with a gun that fired with enough knock back to rival a revolver with fairly strong ammunition, when I was both holding said weapon incorrectly and was too weak to even fire it properly to begin with.

Just another reason to envy the people of Remnant- naturally stronger than the norm even without activated aura, even if only a little.

The gun in question was made for people who, if you exchanged them for an Earth to Remnant equivalent, _would be weaker than me_.

Anyway, getting back to the gun and my botched attemept at trying to handle it.

I took a step forward.

He stopped where he was.

"You are going to leave and we can all pretend this never happened, capishe?"

His dirty face 'ripped' into a grin, showing off his rotted teeth, I swear I could see the fog of his breath, the color yellow.

"Ah-k, whatcha' gonna' do bout' it if weh refuse?" came his slurred and accented response. His face was fucked, his voice sounded like he was having a series of strokes and he was shaking in a way I'm pretty sure isn't from fear.

Fucking druggies.

I could see the kid behind him get up slowly, he couldn't run, the alleyway was a dead end.

The two by his side came up.

I don't think they're very clever.

"I have a gun, I am not afraid to use it on any of you, in fact _all of you_ are potential targets right now" I said, trying to inject as much 'steel' into my words as possible.

The man seemed to pause at that, then took a _proper_ look at me and the weapon in my hand.

He must be _really_ out of it.

He backed up a bit at that.

"Ah... dattad' be a proble-prob-problemah" he slurred, almost falling over when he tripped over his own foot, barely catching himself on a nearby wall.

Then he puked over it.

Alcohol then?

His two friends seemed even less confident than him in that moment, shuffling a bit as they stared at me.

I walked to the side of the alleyway, sparing a brief glance at the kid in the corner- he was in better condition than the other three, his clothes actually fit him and looked somewhat clean, his hair was less dirty and his face wasn't marked with scars.

I moved against the nearest wall, then motioned towards the three, then to the mouth of the alleyway.

"Leave".

I kept it simple, they can't really interpret that wrongly.

This was my fourth mistake.

They moved as a group, I kept the gun trained on them, waiting for the slightest twitch.

Then one of the bigger mans friends -A skeletally thin lad in what would have once been a dark green shirt stained brown with fluids I'd rather not imagine- ran at me.

I was unprepared and fired wildly in panick-

Ringing, _pain_.

" _ **FUCK!**_ " I hissed, one hand on my eye.

I opened my other eye, on the floor was a man, or _what was left of him_.

A not insubstantial part of his shoulder had been blasted into red paste, covering his face as he cradled on the floor.

If I wasn't rendered deaf by the gunshot I might have heard them.

Something bashed against my head, sending me sprawling onto the floor.

The one eye I wasn't cradling opened. I could see a metalic sheen in the darkness.

My gun, I presumed.

I attempted to stand, but I was forced down as a kick barrelled into the area between my neck and chest.

I coughed.

Iron.

 _Blood_.

I scampered off, only just avoiding a drunken kick right where my head just was as it instead slammed into my leg.

This man did not wear soft boots, but they weren't steel capped either.

Still hurt like shit.

Hissing, I bolted, only for my leg to give in a second later and send me to the ground like a rock.

I could hear _something_ , it was quick and fast, like an explosion.

And then I looked behind me, heart thumping, leg seemingly broken and blood dripping down my mouth.

The kid was holding the gun, two handed in an actual stance that you'd see a marksman probably use.

I noticed, in that moment, he was much more muscular than me, not by a ridiculous amount, but enough to fire the bloody thing without hitting himself in the face.

By his expression, he'd never shot anyone before, even if he had the experience.

That or he was surprised at the kick the thing had.

If the adrenaline wasn't flowing through me as strong as it was I might have realised that I _just had_.

I held onto the wall, using it to prop myself up, resting my leg so I could get a better look at the scene.

Two men, one writhing in pain and probably about to bleed out from his shoulder, the other missing half his head.

I could feel bile rise up my throat, I couldn't contain it.

At some point during my... _excretion_ , someone had started patting my back.

After I was hopefully done I turned to look at the kid- his eyes tear filled.

No words, I just brought an arm out, inviting the kid in for a hug.

Always worked with me when dad used to do it.

I patted the kid on the back, comforting him.

After a while, he finished and so did I.

"Hey kid" I asked him.

"...W-What?" Came the small response.

A delayed reaction, probably not good.

"Where am I? City wise anyway?"

He looked at me, clearly confused.

"Um... Brockton Bay, why?"

My mind froze.

Oh _fuck_ no.


	14. Chapter 12

That's... not good.

Surprisingly, I wasn't referring to my location, but my _hand_.

I'd been unable to notice it until the adrenaline had worn off, but my right arm was _fucked_.

It hurt, my index finger was bent, I couldn't bend any of my fingers apart from my littlest finger.

Luckily, she'd had a first aid kit on hand and was able to bandage it, albeit rather roughly.

It worked, though I was still fucked since I had no money to pay for any medical shit.

I miss the NHS.

Anyway, 'she' refers to the mother of Timothy (The kid I'd saved earlier. I found out that he's fifteen years old from idle conversation with), Sandra, a short woman with brown her done in a bun, brown eyes, pretty too.

The kid had asked me if I needed help, bless his heart.

I'd told him I didn't actually _have_ a home and he'd pretty much immediately offered to give me shelter for the night.

No matter how much I told him it wouldn't be necessary and that his mother/father would likely not approve, he remained adamant on his goal.

It's not like I _could_ refuse beyond that, my leg and arm was buggered to the point where getting anywhere would be to much of a hassle.

There was also the fact that I was apparently in Merchent territory without a method of defending myself, broken hand and all.

That wouldn't go well unless I had latent 'Powers' I didn't know about before hand.

Somehow, I doubt it.

He'd helped me to his house after passing me back the gun (I'd put it back in the pocket it had been in before), keeping me steady while I limped in the general direction he was walking.

We got to his home without any issues, thank god.

We nearly did when a bunch of people who I'm guessing were from E88 (one of them had a tattoo that told me such), but they let us be.

The flat he lived in was in a "better" part of the bay- not perfectly clean, but you could tell it was well kept.

I don't like being a nuisance- bothering people unless they bother me.

So, I'd gone and tried to basically leave the two as it was, call it a day with helping a kid not get... harmed? Not sure what the gangers would have done if I hadn't shot them.

Aaand away from those thought, no throwing up in the nice ladies house.

I'd basically said, 'Ok, well your welcome for the help and all that' then tried to leave.

I promptly forgot about my leg, fell over and smacked down onto the floor, barely avoiding breaking my nose.

A simple discussion later, and I'd basically been told to sleep on the couch and stay for the night.

Honestly, I found the fact that anyone was going to trust me in _Brockton Bay_ of all places kind of strange.

I guess that's how it is when you save someone's child... or something like that.

I'd rested on the couch, watching their small TV, listening to the news intently for the first time in my life.

Sandra and I conversed for a while about idle chit chat, mostly about how different America was to England (I'm technically not lying when I say I came from there and got stranded), eventually my busted arm came up when I accidentally nudged it against the sofa.

She'd gone and patched it up with a first aid kit, I'd thanked her and that was that.

Then the man I'd later learn was called Brian entered, there was a little kerfuffle over that, but it was sorted pretty quickly after Sandra explained things.

Brian was a muscular man, tall and broad of both face and shoulders with a magnificent moustache.

He worked at the docks, or, at least tried to.

We ended up chatting about how little work the people at the docks got these days.

After explaining my actions and condition, Brian seemed fine with the idea of me staying the night.

And here I am, wide awake when the rest of the house is sleeping.

In my functioning hand, a Potion.

Potions are spray bottles that heal Pokemon.

I'm not a Pokemon, but all of the ones I did own have died horrifically, the first probably from bleeding out, the second from freezing to death or some crap.

Sighing, I gently undid the bandage, careful not to nudge my hand too much.

I began applying the spray.

[]

[ ]

[ ] **Section Break**

[ ]

[]

At some point after spraying myself I'd fallen asleep, ignoring the burning sensation in my hand as I did so.

When I'd woken up my hand felt... better, but not fully healed.

And I wasn't confused about my

My hand was still sore and likely broken, but I wasn't about to take off the bandage to find out.

I'd rather have it checked by a medical professional.

The household (read as one room that was a kitchen, living room and bedroom all at once) was slowly waking, on the table in the small kitchen sat Timothy, eating some brand of cereal I knew not the name for, but it looked like corn flakes.

I decided in the moment to get off of my ass and not fall asleep again.

Yawning, I stretched my arms and legs on the small, brown couch, popping my joints in an effort to wake my body up faster.

It succeeded.

Timothy over on the table gave me a tired sounding "g' morning" as he ate from the small bowl.

Upon closer inspection, I realised that Sandra was also awake, sitting on at the table, a cup held in hand, wispy bits of mist gently flowing upwards from the cup.

There was a faint scent of Coffee in the air.

I put two and two together.

"Hello" I greeted with a wave, not quite over my tiredness yet.

Sandra responded with a quiet and drowsy 'hello', then took a sip of the beverage in her hand. Her eyes widened for a moment, then she looked back at me, her face a portrait of confusion and horror for a split second- then settled down for a more neutral expression.

She sighed, then arose from her wooden seat at the equally wooden table, a white table cloth covering it. laying down the paper she held in her left hand on the table, she took something from a cupboard and threw it over to me.

I was not expecting it, so I didn't manage to catch whatever it was, instead it lightly smacked against my shoulder and dropped to the ground.

I bent down to pick it up and observed the thing, a small plastic bag-like thing over what I recognised to be a bunch of oats.

Huzzah.

When I looked up there was a bowl and spoon on the table and a wooden chair pulled out.

Thanking Sandra, (to which I got little response, I'm guessing she isn't a morning person) I sat at the table, eating from the bowl.

It was a quick breakfast. I ate the oats quickly, asking a few questions as I did.

At some point during the conversation I was having with Sandra, her son had left, for school I had presumed.

Then I was told what the day and date was. It wasn't _very_ difficult to make the question not seem suspicious.

Good news, I'm not about to get ripped open by The Teeth or Leviathan in the next few minutes.

Bad news, I'm at start of January, the start of January twenty-eleven, and it's a saturday.

Loose memories placed me at roughly before the story starts- somewhere around Taylor's trigger event.

It's weird referring to _her_ like a real person- actually, it's weird referring to _anyone_ from here like an actual, living, breathing person.

The question is, what am I going to do about it?

I mean, I know enough to fuck over the three major gangs of Brockton Bay, given time.

I know Leviathan will attack and can possibly prevent it.

I know enough to be a serious threat... but how do I use that knowledge?

I could be a threat, but I'm not...

Well, there's a difference between knowing something and applying that knowledge in a useful manner that _won't_ explode in your face.

After thinking over things for a moment, I made my decision.

I asked Sandra where the library was.

She told me, and I was off with a thankful goodbye and wish for her and her family to have good luck in the future.

I was going to need my own fair share of good luck.

[]

[ ]

[ ] **Section Break**

[ ]

[]

The streets were pretty busy around where I was walking- many businessmen (and women) were rushing around, filling the streets with seas of fancy black suits.

I ignored them, they wouldn't be important- In fact, my suit helped me fit in a little if anything.

Even with how crinkled it was.

I was able to get into the library with little trouble, the metal detectors (which I hadn't noticed on my way in) were either broken, or the gun in my pocket wasn't made of metal.

The first one sounds more likely, considering the various scratch marks on the thing and the man by them looking inside them with a toolbox by his side.

You'd have thought they wouldn't bother risking it, guess not.

I asked the librarian if I could use a computer. I was given a library card and thirty minutes to get what I wanted over with.

I wasn't lucky to get a spot.

I was, however, lucky to get a spot that didn't have people sitting on my immediate left, right or behind.

I started by searching for the 'Cape' site PHO.

It was the first thing to come up in the internet search.

I then brainstormed what it was I was going to write, while another half of me searched for the appropriate place to post it.

A check on the computer clock, three minutes gone.

I tried creating a new thread, need an account for that.

Need an email address for an account- can't do that, don't have one.

I opened up multiple tabs, all in places that the information seemed most important to post and would be seen quickly.

The main thread for Capes, the most popular thread about the Endbringers I could find and no less than five different places for random Cape stuff this message seemed applicable to, three of which being Brockton Bay based forums.

Two minutes gone.

I began writing.

'Dear people who may read this.

I have little time- so I'll make this breif.

Leviathan will attack Brockton Bay come the 15th of May.

In Brockton Bay there is a villain going by the name Coil- his power is that of either splitting timelines and experiencing the effects of his actions in either, or simulating such and choosing the path that benefits him the most. Coil wishes to take rule over Brockton Bay through the Protectorate and control of gang activity'

I paused, I wasn't sure how true the gang activity part was, so I rephrased it. '

Coil wishes to rule over Brockton Bay through the Protectorate and either the elimination of the three major gangs or control of them. He already has moles within the Brockton Bay Protectorate. Weed out these people PRT, or be eaten from the inside out.

To give some extra incentive to a certain group of people, Coil is in possible possession of the public identities of the likes of Hookwolf, Kaiser and a large majority of the E88.

Soon after the attack by Leviathan the Slaughterhouse Nine shall come to Brockton Bay in June.'

I forgot the exact date, so I neglected to say it.

It's technically not lying.

I had nine minutes left.

How ironic.

'I would say more, but my time in this library is running short- I have to leave now, the library card is running out of time.

I thank Brockton Bay public Library for allowing me to use their computers for this warning.

If you want to find me, don't bother.

I'm already dead.'

I quickly checked for spelling errors, taking a minute to do so.

I sighed, three minutes to copy/paste the post multiple times into each tab and send them.

I did it in two.

I sent all of them through quickly, now to for the next stage of the plan.

I am an idiot, why did I think this would work?

 _Why did I think this would work?!_

Ok, calm down.

I sighed, trying to steel my nerves.

'You can do this.'

I refreshed the main cape page.

I had a few reactions, but...

Sighing, I closed the computer, shut it down.

I walked up to the main reception, passing over the library card.

"I'm done" I said dully.

"Have a good day" was the response from the man at the desk, slow and even more dull than my own voice.

"Well, good bye".

"Goodbye".

I ruffled through my pocket, when I gripped the weapon I pulled it out.

I heard a scream, two.

Then the cold ring of metal was against the side of my head.

Someone "shouted to drop the weapon".

Fuck dealing with this, this place can sort itself out.

I pulled the trigger.


	15. Chapter 13

_Surrounded in shadows- surrounded in screams from a thousand faces, some circles, others cubes and rectangles, one even a hollowed out cube, just the shape in grey wire._

 _All screaming in agony._

 _Where am I?! Why is everything so..._

 _So grey and dead? So horrible?_

 _The world is diseased like a weak man in a lab filled with all the worst diseases known to man- trees and land alike blackened and charred as if a great fire from hell itself had swept forth across it._

 _The earth was moving, as if a great serpent, or a great many of them, were slithering beneath its surface._

 _Rubble, rubble everywhere._

 _Rubble and scales, flesh and bone, all grey and diseased._

 _Atop a throne formed from twisted flesh, screaming skulls screaming as they sunk into it's surafce like tar, lying in the scorched world- a throne of bone, steel and meat- lies a being I cannot describe with words, wispy and warping, changing and turning- I see both it's front and back like they are one, yet it is so much more._

 _I can see so much more of it, hiding insideitbuthtat'simpossiblebecausespacedoesn'tworkthatway-_

 _Its voice pierces my mind, like a bird of prey spearing a fish from the waters, like an arrow forged from mental fire that sends my mind reeling, like the voice of god and satan turned into an instrument of brute force and slammed into my mind._

 _ **"Five to fight and one to unite."**_

 _The world shakes, suddenly the sky is the land and the land is the sky. Roles reversed._

 _ **"Fifteen pieces- sans king, all important, all needed right here for our ceremony. "**_

 _Color changed, blackened land-turned-sky became a blinding white and the sky-turned-land became a miasma of shifting colors, like a rainbow exceptthereisn'tthatmanycolors-_

 _ **"Until Fifteen Pieces are won, you shall forever be stuck in the eternal spinning one.**_

 _ **A cycle, again and again. until fifteen pieces are united once again."**_

 _The thing twists and distorts, green and orange and red and blueandyellowand-_

 **Loop Two: Back Unto The Breach.**

[]

[ ]

[ ] **Section Break**

[ ]

[]

I shot up, awake in an instant, not looking at my surroundings as my mind raced at a thousand miles an hour.

Coughing, I focused on the... dream? Nightmare?

Whatever it was, I didn't remember much, if anything at all.

Something about pieces? The number fifteen?

What on earth is going on?

'Well, you're being carted off to random worlds with a fictional template, where said transport is activated via death switch' My mind unhelpfully supplied.

Shaking off my confusion, I decided to focus on the presen-...

I looked at my surroundings.

I've been here.

 _I've been here!_

That bed, and the IV drip!

The room!

I rushed to the bedside table, on it was my phone, the very phone I'd left in my pocket and completely forgotten about.

I snatched it up, delicately placing it in my pocket, elated to have something _familiar_ , to _be_ somewhere familiar!

I looked around a little bit more, finding the clock that lay on the bedside table near instantly.

A golden coin lay on the table also, I ignored it in favour of the clock.

The same alarm clock that had woken me up, digital with red letters and a grey plastic case.

It was, according to the small clock, 8:54 in the afternoon.

Now, this got me thinking, the supposed festival that I was going to go to before... That's _really_ weird to think about.

I died here, you don't here that everyday, even less think it.

Shivering, I picked my train of thought back up.

The war festival thing was supposed to start at around eight.

My thought process went as such:

I'm at the house of Maki, the one I'd died in front of an unknown amount of time ago.

The time tells me I arrived back here at nearly nine.

Last I checked the time it was a little over half six.

Then, a bit later from then, we had gone to the cafe.

Tracing my steps throughout that day as best I could, more challenging than need be because of all the crazy shit that's happened since then.

My minds too cloudy to think and I can feel a little pain in my stomach.

It's that of hunger.

Grimacing, I left the room in favour of the clear, white hallway, continuing my thoughts as I went to what I remember being the living room.

If I was right, I came back maybe... an hour or so after my own death? If it wasn't that then it was probably a day or so.

...But if I was _right_ , then that could be something to note down.

Later, when Maki gets back to her own home I'll explain the situation.

And hopefully not get killed in the process.

The plan was to see if she would be willing to offer me a few things, chief amongst those being a backpack, a camera, a mask of some kind and something to put beneath the suit.

I'm not very confident in her being able to get the last one, but she might be willing to help with the second.

I want a camera so I can take a picture of all the sights I see, immortalise my journey, something to hold onto after I get through all of this. Something to prove my sanity.

After I get home.

I winced at the thought, I'd nearly forgotten about getting home in this... anarchy? Would this week constitute enough shit to be labelled 'anarchy'?

I guess it would.

Sighing, I checked the closest room, then, upon finding it to not be the kitchen, I checked the next one and entered.

Everything was placed in reasonable places and where you would expect them to be. Bread in a slightly more "futuristic" looking bread bin built into the wall, meat in the fridge as well as a few vegetables. I made a sandwich, ham and butter with a few thin slices of tomato and cucumber.

Sandwich made, I placed it on a plate and went into the living room and sat down.

As I ate, I gazed around a bit, then caught site of the clock on the wall.

I was a little surprised that it wasn't made of weird future plastic/metal mesh like everything else seemed to be, but was instead made from what I'm pretty sure is scrap metal pieces. It was hung on the wall, ticking.

A pendulum clock made of scrap metal.

I don't know why, but it just fit.

According to the clock, it had been fourteen minutes since I'd awaken in the room I'd slept in moments prior.

9:08pm.

I finished the sandwich and placed the dish next to the dish washer, entered the room again and sat down.

9:09pm.

Tapping my foot against the... metal floor? Plastic floor?

White floor.

Tapping my foot against the white floor, I waited.

9:13pm.

I don't know when it happened, but eventually I just ended up drifting off for a bit.

I woke when I heard the sound of a door opening.

Waking myself up a bit more, I sat straighter and waited.

Footsteps, then silence.

I could barely hear the sound of her taking in breath.

One thing I'd noticed.

Maki kept a really large mirror in the front of the living room, it was a stand up one that was seemingly nailed or glued to the wall.

Observing her through the mirror, I saw the shock on her face.

"I'm alive".

Silence.

She took a breath.

"...How?"

I turned to her. How do I put this?

An idea on how to put it came to me.

Raising a hand, I pointed my index finger at the ceiling, as if having a moment of clarity "I don't know how long it's been for you, but I've had a rough week." I said simply.

Her face cleared from the shock a little, but she remained silent and dumbfounded.

In her hands were two bags filled near to the brim.

My mouth was quicker than my mind.

"Want some help with those?" I pointed towards the bags in question.

She shook her head, as if to clear it.

"Sure."

I got off the couch and walked over, taking a bag from her and following her into the kitchen.

The silence was awkward, so I tried to break it with what was probably the stupidest thing I possibly could have said.

"You didn't think you'd be rid of me that easily did you?"

She paused for a moment, a box of some food product in her hand. For a few moments laughed hysterically, after a moment of silence she turned to me and glared.

I promptly shut my mouth and went back to helping her put all the food away.

But one niggling little question just wouldn't let me leave it be.

"How long have I been gone?"

"Not even a day."

Placing some bread in the bread bin, I pulled a number from memory then replied.

"I woke up in the guest room, clock said it was somewhere around eight fifty, so I think it was an hour?"

She didn't respond, just continued packing some things into the fridge.

I finished off the last of the bag with some spice put onto the spice rack.

She finished not much later, then went back to the living room.

I followed her and sat down on one of the two sofas she had. Not sure why she needs two, but I won't judge.

"So what's with the suit?" She asked.

"Got it from a dude, he held a friend for ransom, told me he'd give er' back to me if I did a job for him.

He pushed me off a plane"

I chose not to elaborate.

She turned to me.

Her face was a mesh of many different things- to many to place exactly what emotions were there.

"What... Jack, what happened to you after... it happened?"

Her voice was steady, soft.

Maybe she didn't expect me to want to answer?

I did.

"I woke up in a jungle, made a friend, stole some money from an old man then died after a rock monster slammed its foot into my face a bit too hard."

It... it was oddly easy to recount my own death, the fear, the fear that told me to run until my legs broke beneath me, away from the beast that was about to stamp on my face and end my life-

Then I'd reappeared somewhere else, all the fear gone and all my wounds gone.

Wounds?

I brought up my hand and undid the bandage, listening as Maki asked another question.

It surprised me, both her question and my fully working hand.

"Are you all right?"

She cared, I knew this, but knowing I still had one friend went a long way for my psyche.

"I've been crushed, both by gravity and a beast, shot at and frozen to death yet here I am, completely unbruised."

I paused for a moment, sighing.

"I'm fine, just a bit... on edge? No, just... I don't know what I'm feeling."

I tried to conjure the words that would explain how I feel- but none came to mind.

"I've had a rough week. It's apparently been not even a day here, but I've gone through more shit in the past few days than I have _in my lifetime_. I made a friend, I lost a friend, I was stabbed in the back, I came back and then shot myself-"

I paused.

Worm.

I didn't think my actions through- Coil (if he does indeed have the power to nullify a timeline) would be able to just no sell what I'd done, failing that, I would probably not be believed unless my 'suicide' at the library got out far and wide and was also traced back to the information I'd spilled.

A tinker could do it, but would they?

"What?!" her voice was urgent, demanding my attention.

"Why'd you shoot yourself?"

She was shocked, understandable.

I explained the situation a bit further.

I'd told her I knew her world as a video game once, she'd taken it rather well.

When you actually look at the multiverse plausibly, the fact that I saw her world through the lens of such a device meant nothing since this place would still exist anyway.

Funsies.

I explained it a bit more, how every world I'd gone to was one I knew from another form of fiction in one form or another, and that one I wasn't sure of since I kind of froze to death before I could do anything, and the other was one I just simply didn't know.

I let her soak it in before I moved on to Worm and explained my reasoning.

I gave her the quick version of Worm, skipping a lot to get her up to date.

"So, I uploaded it onto the internet on multiple forums under a guest account, then shot myself so I didn't have to deal with the aftermath, probably a bad idea honestly. I didn't think about it much."

She seemed to mull it over for a moment.

"Well, I think that's enough excitement for one day, I need to sleep, it's one in the morning in case you didn't notice."

I checked the clock, sure enough it was one-twenty-three in the morning.

"You mind if I take the guest room?"

"Go ahead." she replied, moving off to her own room most likely.

Nodding, I went to the guest room and stripped down to my boxers.

I need new clothes, I've worn these fuckers for a week straight...

The thought made me shiver, but I couldn't do much about it.

I turned off the light and slept once again.

Or at least tried to, I just ended up wondering about random shit until my mind finally decided to calm the fuck down and rest.

 **AN/ No action for now.**


	16. Chapter 14

When I'd folded my clothes, I'd done it wrong.

I only realised such when I woke up at almost quarter-to-nine and looked at them.

The suit was likely cheap enough to buy for a gang, but not so cheap as to be bought by your average Joe. My guess would be it's part of a brand, hence the similar outfits.

That, or the man who was in control of the gang that wore them -Junior, if I remember correctly- had bought the fucking things custom tailored and made.

I didn't exactly owe the dude anything, it would be Torchwick who did if anything, but I knew enough about suits to know they weren't your standard fair.

I could only hope it was part of a 'cheaper' brand and not Gucci status or something, because the obsidian-colored suit, crimson tie and black leather leggings that came with it were piled on top of each other in vague shapes that would make any proud purveyor of clothing start beating on me like I was a fat, nerdy kid in a stereotypical American jock club.

Football club? Don't the Americans call it socker?

Fuck it, that isn't the point.

The point is the fucking things were covered in wrinkles, more wrinkles than the face of an elderly african elephant.

Obviously, I'm not very happy about that.

Since they happen to be pretty much all I have right now, I put them back on, tried to smoothen over all of the crinkles in the bloody things.

Luckily, I succeeded.

I put them back on, lacking any other clothing, and walked back into the main room.

Maki either wasn't up yet, or I was just early to wake. Either was possible.

I decided to make myself a simple sandwich like the day before and wait.

Halfway through my second sandwich, Maki entered the room.

"How are you?"

I paused, swallowing the last of the sandwich.

"Fucking great. Better than yesterday for sure."

"You said you needed to speak with the... Guardians right?"

I thought on it for a moment.

"Yeah, I'm actually planning on giving it a go now. I just have one problem." Cracking my knuckles, more out of habit than being nervous, I put forward my question.

"You wouldn't happen to be able to get me a backpack and a camera would you? Maybe a weapon to shoot myself if things go south?"

Her face was hilarious.

"Wait. You want a gun so you can shoot yourself?"

"Yeah, also a backpack and a camera to hold shit and take some nice pictures."

Shaking her head, she countered with: "I guess I never thought about it, but that does make some sort of sense."

"What does?" I asked, honestly curious.

"Well, if you do have a gun suicide is a pretty valid option-"

"I actually have a gun, I just can't fire the fucking thing without breaking all the bones in my hand- Literally. My right arm should be shattered right now, the only reason it isn't is because of the jumps."

She looked at me with a confused scowl.

"You broke your hand?"

"Yeah, hurt like a bitch."

She sighs and leaves the room.

"I have a backpack, I'll have to check a bit closer for a camera or a gun you can use."

Quickly, I asked her a question before she left the room proper.

"Hey, you like eggs?"

A slightly distant "Yeah" was all I heard.

'Well, time to jog on I guess' came my thoughts.

I spent the next few minutes preparing two dishes of eggs and soldiers.

[]

[ ]

[ ] **Section Break**

[ ]

[]

Maki and I walked to Guardian HQ. I was wearing a backpack made from some weird leathery-ish material that apparently _isn't actually tehcnically leather_ because normal cows and animals basically died off a while ago in favour of robotic critters based off of them that pull off the same tasks, or biologically enhanced cyborg-cows.

Wait.

I'm currently in a society of cyborgs. How did I not notice this before?

As the two of us walked through the white and grey, futuristic streets of Innerpeace, I took things in with a new perspective.

"Hey, Maki."

"Yeah?" She responds, turning to face me with a confused expression.

"Has it occurred to you that you live in a society of cyborgs?"

Her brow furrows for a moment, then one eyebrow raises, her eyes are sparkling with a gleam I can't describe.

"No. Never occurred to me before."

"Ok."

Realising we were getting closer to the Guardian HQ, I parted with Maki, promising I'll be back at some point with some great pictures.

Before I entered, I was already on the way to thinking about what to say and how to say it.

Presentation is key after all.

But just to make sure, I felt for the energy pistol in my pocket, a supposedly cheap thing. It has next to no range, the projectiles it fires being basically just small balls of plasma that the average Galleon would laugh at.

But it's enough to do the job.

[]

[ ]

[ ] **Section Break**

[ ]

[]

The guy at the desk was the same guy from when I was first here. He perked up upon seeing me.

"Hi man, we met before. I had you send that message remember?"

"How could I forget? Apparently she was determined to find you, why I have no idea." He pauses to cough, then looks back up with a cheery smile.

"I presume you're here to go meet her then?"

"Yeah, though I was under the idea that the actual Guardian HQ was an airship, you seem to be implying that she's right here."

He nods at that.

"Yeah, she's been here for the past day, sent out a search party for you."

Well this is bad. I haven't had the time to organise my thoughts, to make a speech! Shit!

Frowning, I feel for the pistol in my coat pocket, then stop so as to not cause suspicion.

"Yeah, sure."

So I've derailed cannon basically within the first week? Maybe?

I don't have a time scale for the events of ZX, though it would make sense for the first half hour to be within the span of a day, it could easily be a week before they have to fight the mavericks in Area D.

I need more information, perhaps I can fish some out of Prairie?

Following the Guardian through the base is... _Interesting_ to say the least.

It's strange walking through the white-pink walls. I can easily compare the design to that of the insides of the Grand Nuage, and it's a really weird sensation of deja vu constantly at all times, even when you know _why_ you're having that feeling.

After another few turns, turns that seem to be rather random and overlap on each other, through the maze-like interior of the building, I finally get essentially pushed into the room.

It's white walls for days, a pink outline on the bottom, a metal, white desk in the middle of the room and a woman in pink messing with green holograms that appear out of nowhere on the table.

The outskirts of the room have what are supposedly guards, armed Guardians with weapons handy. Six of them, two seemingly female and the rest male.

The Guardian by my side coughs into his fist, letting the woman at the desk know someone has arrived.

She looks up, blinking.

Blue eyes. Like the ocean if I go for a close comparison. Her hair is yellow, a shade I don't believe is possible. Yellow like a sunflowers petals.

The way she carries herself gives her more weight than her rather short, somewhat childish appearance would normally bring, her outfit a mesh of pink and dark purple, white highlighting some of it. A small green gem is placed on her hat, shining in the light.

"Hm?" She asks, simple but demanding an answer.

The Guardian motions his hand at me, then her eyes are brought unto mine.

One word- Intense.

I couldn't hold that stare, I just couldn't. Turning my head, I declined to look at her directly.

I don't know what I felt in those brief seconds of contact, but it was strong enough to set my heart racing.

Taken charge of the conversation wouldn't seem to be a good idea. I don't think I'd have the stomach for it.

I have to try anyway.

"This is him?" Came the innocent voice.

"Yeah. He got here a little over a minute ago. I'll leave now."

"Thank you."

He left with a salute.

Ok. Now what do I do?

"How do you know?"

"I can't tell you."

A lie, I easily could tell her. I'm just not willing to.

I'm not sure I trust her.

A moment of silence, I took it as my Que to explain myself.

"You see, I am in a very peculiar situation." Before I can stop myself I start pacing, nervous.

Stopping might make me look more idiotic than continuing, so I continue.

"I have access to some crucial information regarding the present, the future and as I have demonstrated, the past."

My stride ends with me back where I started, being stared down by the six guards of Prairie and the woman in pink herself.

"I gained your attention to pass on some crucial information, now-"

It was something done in the moment, I'm not sure why i did it, but I did.

I pulled the pistol from the pocket in my suit and placed it against my head, a rushed action.

Before I was even three quarters of the way to putting the weapon to my head, I had seven weapons pointed at me, their colorful nature doing little to ease my panicked breathing.

Breathing in and out, I slowly brought myself to a more stable mindset.

"I want to play a game."

Prairie, standing up with a much more complex energy pistol pointed at me, lowered her weapon. Her eyes flicker to various parts of the room, mostly towards those Guarding her.

"What exactly would this game be?"

"Why I'm glad you asked!" I put on the best smile I could, though it must have been obviously fake.

"Well, I ask you a question, you ask me a question. If you try to pressure me on a topic I don't want to discuss, well..." I move the gun in my right hand, making sure my message is understood.

"I'll go first. What is the status of the Model Z Megaman?"

Prairie straightens her back. She seems to be thinking hard on something, but then, responds.

"Girouette is dealing with private matters. Who are you?"

My smirk was genuine, a question I could answer without being too revealing.

And Giro isn't dead, so he can still be saved!

"Me? Well, I'm just a world-hopping wanker you don't need to care about."

Her frown turns into an all out scowl for a moment, before her face goes back to a plain, hard expression.

"My turn." I thought on it for a moment, then asked "What is the status of the Model X Megaman?"

She pauses for a moment. Her facade cracks, showing concern that disapears so fast I'm almost doubting it exists.

"...Aile is fine."

Aile? Who is-

Oh.

Oh I'm a fucking idiot.

I met her, I fucking met her and I didn't even realise it... What the fuck brain?

"Oh. Well, your turn I guess."

She seems to ponder over the question for a long while.

When she finally responds, it isn't what I was expecting.

"Why are you doing this?"

A bitter chuckle escapes me. My response is true.

"Well... Truth be told, I've always liked the idea of being a hero. Goodbye Prairie, I'll see you at another time."

Hers eyes seem to go wide.

My finger pulls the trigger.

I don't even feel the burn.

[]

[ ]

[ ] **Section Break**

[ ]

[]

Cracking my back, I get up.

I know where I am, Pokemon.

I need firepower. Enough to be a threat to anything that might come my way. This might be the only place I can get that power.

This might be my best chance at helping the worlds I go to, I'm not going to say I can fix all their problems. I can't say that honestly.

What I can say is that I can probably help, _even_ if only a little.

A quick check of my surroundings, old looking wooden walls, laying on a bed, cobwebs on the walls and a static filled television in the corner.

Also a painting that seems to be staring at me.

The Old Chateau.

Not the worst place to be, but it's haunted.

Shit.

A/N: Another! Got a bit too busy with something else. Managed to get this out today.

Fun.


	17. Chapter 15

When I had initally entered the Old Chateau, my stuff lay by my side. The blue bag holding most of my stuff had been abandoned in favour of stuffing the remaining Pokeballs into the weird not-actual-leather backpack as well as the two remaining Potions I had managed to bring with me the previous jump.

The gun I'd shot myself with was wrapped safely in my right hand, the small laser pistol (which, much to my chagrin, could only fire one small burst of five pellets before needing to recharge: read as, have its ammo replaced) kept close in case I ever needed to use it.

Ghosts aren't immune to fire, so a laser should logically be able to harm them. Failing that I'll hit them with my fists and hope for the best.

That Duskull from before seemed particularly vulnerable to being punched, so either it had to put conscious effort into 'phasing' (and didn't for some reason) or Ghosts weren't generally immune to being punched or slapped.

A strange concept since they have an immunity to normal and fighting type moves, something that the punching and slapping people did tended to be if it didn't have some other type attached to it, ala Fire Punch.

Or it's like mystery dungeon where you can slap a ghost with a basic attack but not use a normal type move on them.

Ah, truly a life saver.

I hate Shedinja.

The door to the room I found myself in had a cold handle, cobwebs covering its surface and sticking to my hand as I placed it onto the metal knob.

Twisting it came with an eerie, and rather unwelcome, screeching sound as the old wood and metal moved for what was probably the first time in years, a decade even.

A shiver went down my spine as the door was pushed to the side, screechings coming from it.

Sighing at the inevitable, I tightened my grip on the small pistol in my free arm, keeping it at my side in the event that I needed to use it.

The hallway was long, lit by a few candles that glowed blue for some reason, on the wall to my left and right were doors, a great amount of them. A line of doors that I appear to be in the middle of.

To my right, a hall that only has lightning at the very end, a seemingly neverending darkness inbetween it and here, to my left the exact same, except there is no 'light at the end of the tunnel'.

What a fitting expression.

I've never been a believer in the supernatural, always believed it to be a bunch of, though interesting, made up fantasies of people who don't want to live in a mundane, purely physical existence. Same with the would be 'psychics' of the world.

That lack of belief isn't going to make a good shield against real ghosts and psychics, so I dropped it in favour of learning more about what I may come to face.

Even with the encounter in the forest, I still had thoughts at the back of my mind telling me 'Ghosts don't exist, there is no poltergeist after you. They aren't real'.

The human brain is illogical like that, mine especially.

The experience in this house would be what finally made me realise that there was a monster under the bed waiting for me to sleep, ghosts are very much a threat to my wellbeing and should be treated as such.

'Respect the dead'.

A quick check through the halls again, finding no light, I raised the pistol nd fired down the hallway to my right-

The gun wouldn't fire.

Frowning, and ignoring the chill that went down the back of my hand, I checked the side of the pistol, an LCD screen showing me a flickering '000'.

Not creepy at all.

Replacing the seemingly faulty battery with one of the two others from my pocket, I fired it once more.

The pistol let out a dull whine, before firing a pitiful pellet of glowing yellow plasma into the darkness, revealing a rather disturbing sight as it passed by something in the shadows.

A humanoid silhouette.

'Well shit' I mentally cursed, bringing up the pistol to view its side once again, keeping my free eye on the darkness, barely able to see the shape now that I concentrated hard enough.

0̴́͘͞͠0̶͘͘͝0͏̴̧͞

Well... Well that's not good at all.

My mind began putting the dots together relatively quickly, adrenaline tends to do that.

'Ok, creepy figure in the shadows. Check.

Technology dying on me. Check.

I'm all alone in an old house/mansion that's haunted. Double check.

Looks like your typical... Horror movie fair.'

'Fuck.'

"Ok. So your the spooky ghost here to steal my soul are you?" I asked the darkness with as neutral a tone as I possibly could, trying to sound bored.

"Well good luck with that. I never had a soul to begin with."

Whether that's true or not I have no idea. I mean, I probably have a soul?

Note for later: Find out if this unit has a soul, could be important later.

My inner musings were interupted by... Nothing?

I'd lost track of the shape in the shadows a bit ago, my eyes going unfocused for just a moment-

Wait.

I started to see it when I fired the plasma into the darkness, how was I able to see it-

The candles. It was getting closer-

A cold wind on the back of my neck has me flailing around to stare at the nothing behind me.

I could have sworn... I could have sworn something just breathed on me.

I could barely repress the shudder.

Ok Jack, get it together, ghosts exist here. The supernatural shit from the movies is easy to do if you're a potentially psychic dead person-

And now I'm thinking about the Dex' entries for ghost pokemon.

They're not painting a pretty picture. In fact, if I'd argue that there was never a picture, I was looking at it wrong and they were building a satanic ritual pentagram-thing.

A small droplet of sweat started to go down my brow, I was getting nervous.

With a sigh, I tried to calm myself down, wiping the cold liquid from my hea-

That's not sweat.

In the candlelight, I could see the thick and viscous bile covering my hand, drool if drool was yellow and had chunks in it.

'Fuck this shit with an iron pole' I mentally hissed, flicking the liquid partially off of my hand, instead turning to the still lit candle.

Panicking, I tore it from the wall. My mind wasn't thinking about how easy it was to tear it from the wall or the weird chill I got from taking it, I was focused on running the fuck out of here and burning this place to the ground if I had to.

Shadows twisted and curled in teh corner of my vision, the walls seemed to almost twist out of the lights path, the wood that boxed me into this place almost forsaking the light, fleeing from the grasping aura of light the wax candle emitted in my hand.

Then the laughing started.

I ran through the corridors, barely stopping myself from slamming into the hallways end in my panic, the only thing stopping me from slamming into it being my own hand, bouncing my body off of the wall to slam into the door on the side of the hallway.

It made a somewhat muffled 'pff' noise as my entire body slammed against it to little effect.

Giggles at the edge of my hearing. A little girl.

Just wrong on a primal level.

Hissing, I could hear the giggles coming closer.

I tried to grasp the handle, but gasped at the absolute cold, retreating my hand for only a second before fear overtook my bodies natural reflexes and forced it open.

Locked. The door remained unmoving.

Closer. Outright laughter. Wrong.

I was hyperventilating, but I didn't care. I instead took a quick few steps back and tackled at the door. It gave somewhat, the wood that made up its structure snapping under the pressure and leaving a peep hole into the stairs outside the breaking splinters of the door that continued to cage me.

Maniacal laughter.

I made the mistake of looking back down the hallway.

An amalgem of red and blue orbs staring into my eyes.

I stared back, horrified.

Instinct kicked in, I reared back and kicked the snapping wood with all the force I could muster.

"Don't you want to play?"

"NO!" I screamed as the door flew off its hinges, slamming against the floor and kicking up dust in the process.

Something cold was grasping for me-

I jumped.

Almost tipping, I rushed down the stairs, skipping three with each step.

"Too bad." Hissed a voice much harsher and masculine, though equally terrifying.

I landed on the wooden floor, putting as little time as I could into bracing my fall, I rolled-

The floor vanished, replaced with an infinite blackness. A void.

The candle in my hand was left to fall down.

The light faded in time, a bottomless pit.

A hand grasped at the edge of the remaining floor, successfully grasping onto a plank of wood.

I looked down at the abyss below. The candle was barely visible as it continued its descent. A blue light.

I regret ever looking up.

Pale and thin. Unnaturally so, an old man in a tailored suit.

He stared down at me with a clear glimpse of malice in his- its eyes.

My muscles locked up.

It was the only thing that kept me from falling.

"Are y-you quite d-done?" I questioned, my voice wavering as I tried to talk and breath at the same time.

The thing grew a twisted smile.

I knew what the answer was.

 **Anger.**

"Go to hell!" I hissed, bringing my free arm up to grasp at the plank of wood-

It loosened.

My eyes widened, the anger fading as I heard the plank start to come loose.

"Oh shi-"

I never got to finish what I was going to say, instead I fell into the abyss, screaming all the way.

The world went black- The last thing I saw was the glowing eyes of the man lighting his cheshire grin just enough for me to see it.

Two dead, red eyes.

'Fucking ghosts...'

And all conscious thought left me.

[]

[ ]

[ ] Section Break

[ ]

[]

Where?-

Outside.

I'm outside the mansion.

Not questioning it, I got to my feat, checked my backpack was on quickly, then ran away from the large, imposing mansion.

Fuck that place. Fuck it, kill it with fire.

I may not have known it at the time, but I was being followed.

A candle glowed in the dark, rising from its spot on the floor.

It followed the human that had held it, intent on revenge.

The candle dropped to the floor, in its place a spirit arose and stalked its target.

[]

[ ]

[ ] Section Break

[ ]

[]

The blur of the undergrowth as my legs carry me through it is not what I pay attention to.

The rustling of my backpack isn't what I am paying attention to.

The small laser pistol in my hands is the focus of my attention, the counter on its side read as "004.2".

I wasn't told about fucking percentages!

After running deep enough into the woods that I actually felt somewhat comfortable with the distance from that hellhole, I sat down and began the ritual of the 'organics' known as "Heavy Breathing".

After maybe five minutes of trying to calm the fuck down, I took a quick look through my bag, taking out the grey, steel-like camera Maki had given me.

After getting it up and running (turned on the power button), I got back up and began my search for teh road once again.

Ah, memories. Depressing memories, but memories nonetheless.

I took a few pictures- The camera had a large amount of space, one million, four thousand and five hundred pictures in total.

I'd used five of those slots on a few shots of the trees. They looked nice.

Along the way, I'd managed to find my way back onto the path by roughly going in a circle around where the mansion should have been based on where I'd run from. I was going back on myself essentially.

Well, sort of, but that's besides the point.

The point you may be asking? I want a Pokemon, I have three Pokeballs in my bag and a laser pistol at the ready.

I'm sure I'll be able to capture something worthwhile while I'm here.

With that in mind, I set off towards where I presumed the path would be, the mountains behind me and a ghost mansion somewhere to the left of me.

I'll get something eventually.

Eventually...


	18. Chapter 16

A/N: Man has this been neglected. Grimm Quest is great and all, but I would never have thought it would take me this long to update this. Either way, update ho!

It felt like... Maybe two hours since I'd started looking around the trail.

In that time, I'd found very little, only the occasional glimpse of something small scuttling in the grass. Nothing I'd want to risk catching, just Buneary-

 _Don't think about it. She/He/Whatever she was is gone. Yes, it is all your fault bu there's no use dwelling on it now_.

Sighing, I continued the search through the lush undergrowth, my feet carrying me in large, swinging steps as my eyes scanned everything around me in an effort to search for something that could turn into something powerful enough to get me through some of the troubles potentially ahead.

I can dream, can't I?

The morning light lit the world with a warm, amber glow. It was rather pleasant to watch the trees- I could see glimpses of insects and Bug Type Pokemon swaying in the trees like pendulums. Rather grey and drab pendulums, but pendulums none-the-less.

Mostly Cascoon and Silkoon, so nothing too grand. Not worth capturing anyway.

If I catch a Pokemon, it needs to _really_ be able to fight straight away so I can actually train the poor bastard. It's like the Magikarp problem- If you're patient enough to train it you can get something at least somewhat decent, but before that you've got something rather ineffective you have to work with first. You need something to train it up for you or its never going to evolve.

Most Bug Types, I find, suffer with the same problem as they don't have attacks powerful enough to really do anything to things their level. As a result of this, you need to support them with a somewhat decent Pokemon to take some hits for them to get Experience Points. The upside is they tend to be pretty powerful early on when they evolve fully, but sort of loss traction as you fight against stronger opponents.

Course', that logic probably doesn't translate too well for actual Pokemon fights. I'd be surprised if having a Cascoon hit the enemy once with a tackle and then bringing them back in to fight that small bird you just shot some string at with a Gyrados would actually help that Cascoon grow in any way. Hell, I doubt it would even help the Gyrados.

I'll have to look that up in a library when I get to civilisation for more information on that- at least I won't be 'done' for stealing. I look nothing like Maki and don't share the same gender as her, nor skin tone, so I have nothing to fear about from the law because of... what I did.

...Unless the Pokeballs have a form of tracking on them, then I'm fucked no matter what.

 _'I'll ignore that idea for now, it won't get me anywhere.'_ I mused silently as I continued to tread through the rather nice scenery, still searching for something a bit... Bigger, than a Buneary or... or a Budew.

Maybe a Geodude? They're pretty tough little buggers, literally made of stone and evolve at a relatively low level (would that translate well into real life? Note for later when you find a library). Maybe I could find a few around here if I looked hard enough, I remember them being something abundant.

Plus, the idea of taking one of the things I once died to and making it my literal shield is one I find rather amusing.

Mind made up, I began my search for suspicious rocks, or just rocks that might be big enough to fit the size of the ones that had fought and killed me mere days prior.

[]

[ ]

[ ] Section Break

[ ]

[]

I'd had no luck in my search.

No Geodude, a lot of Bidoof (God do those things look weird) and Buneary though.

As time went on, I'd been finding less and less of... Well, anything, and the memories of what happened last time I stopped seeing many Pokemon have taught me to not risk it.

At that moment, I'd decided to just look for Eterna City, hope I can find somewhere to sleep, then go back into the wild looking for another Pokemon that I could train up a little. I needed a starting point after all.

Of course, I never got that far.

I was walking, still searching for the route to what I could call a temporary home- I didn't find it straight away, I had to suffer first.

It started slowly, the first signs I could really notice was the silence.

Where once there was a positive and welcoming mix of chittering and tweeting from the wild Pokemon of the area, there was now an eerie silence. I could feel that there was something wrong- But it didn't hit me, exactly what felt off wasn't something I noticed until minutes after it had _probably_ occurred. The only upside was I'd finally found the road to Eterna, or at least I hoped it was.

Emphasis on probably- I don't know when it stopped, just that at some point it did and it was making me nervous.

When I noticed, I was halfway to absolutely _terrified_.

I knew what it meant. I was being trailed, likely by a powerful Ghost if the silence was any proof. That or all of the residents of the forest had their 'sleeping schedule' set to midday. I knew I wouldn't be that lucky though, and instead kept to my instincts telling me to _get the fuck away from there_.

This time, I knew not to try to fight it and _ran_. I didn't look back. I didn't choose any particular direction.

I just ran, ran as fast as I could along the road I'd been following.

No matter how far I went, I never seemed to really go anywhere, though I'm pretty sure that was just my nerves and not me literally getting nowhere.

Even if it was, that changed nothing as I still ran as far as I could as fast as I could.

It didn't help.

Fire.

Fire is an old thing, something mastered long ago by primitive humans sitting around campfires, made to cleanse food of its impurities and sometimes even used in warafre against fellow men who had also mastered the art- Or perhaps had not, either way, the point remains.

Fire is an old tool of humanity, something used both in war and domestic food-making.

Pokemon however? Quite a few never needed to master fire.

they were _born_ masters of it. Some can just as easily expel flame from themselves as they can breathe- Some are so linked with the element that they can't even stop being on fire.

This went through my mind, not in words so eloquent, but summarised in a much simpler and plainer form.

Light swooshed into existence, spectral blue fire appearing from nothing, dancing in the trees and licking them till they turned black and charred seconds after-

I was surrounded. I was forced to stop.

I had nowhere to run.

 _'They have fire.'_

A sentence so simple, so meaningless without context.

And yet now it meant the difference between my life and death.

"Fuck!" I roared, barely managing to stop myself from stepping into a large patch of the flames that had accrued across some grass on the path, not fading even with the grass turning black and fading to dust.

A cold glow, contrasting the flames casting their writhing shadows hit me, a perversion of what fire is- _should be._

Nowhere to run or hide, I looked everywhere.

I was surrounded in a circle of cold, blue flame.

 _'Nowhere to run. You're fucked.'_

My breathing hit a fever pitch, I could _feel_ my eyes shrink to the size of pinpricks as the cold seemed to coalesce into a single spot and slid over my spine, sending me shivering and my teeth chattering as I watched the flames dance and writhe in sickeningly enticing flickers of activity.

Whispers. Whispers that rolled around my torso and arms, ending at my ears.

" . "

Terror slashed its mark across my heart, making me jump as the voices source, one I had turned to confront suddenly echoed from all around.

" . . ."

It trailed off.

"Why?" I found myself asking with skin feeling like ice, hands shaking and heart palpitating so hard I could _hear_ it.

" . . . "

I was provided no answer.

And then the world turned dark. All the flame flickering back into nothing.

No fire, no trees, nothing.

Just the burnt corpses of twisting wood recoiling in horror- Their forms contorted into twisted, almost pitiful corpses.

" **RUN**."

I almost tripped, I almost tripped.

I almost tripped as my feet pounded into the earth, pushing me forward.

The sky hadn't darkened, the trees had gone vibrant and green once more-

And then I glimpsed its body, saw its leathery face, the golden zipper and crimson, baleful glare in its eyes as its body slithered through the air, its long and leathery form oozing past a gap in the treeline.

I didn't see the rest, it simply vanished into nothing-

"BEHIND YOU."

Eyes widening, I saw it, out of the corner of my vision.

Its grin as it arose to stare into my own eyes with its own was suddenly blocked out by my fist, impacting against the _thing_ , the creature whose visage reminded me of a stuffed toy.

It leathery skin- Patches of cheap, fake fur had dotted it like something you see on the stereotypical teddy bear.

And those two red eyes...

They were fucking sewn on _buttons_.

Recoiling with a hissing roar that made me wince, the creature faded into a black, almost liquid form, and then disappeared.

I continued to run.

And then a black sphere of energy crackling with purple lightning slammed through the air next to me, making a smacking sound as it pressed against the wind and proved stronger, barely missing me and causing me to actually trip up.

But I could see it.

I could see the end of the forest- The place where it all ends!

My hands tore into the earth, forcing me forward as I tried to scrabble back onto my legs, not actually managing to do so and instead just ending up tripping myself over my own arms as my legs slammed into them-

I didn't stop. I continued to wretch myself to my feet and finally succeeded after maybe the third time.

and then my path was covered in a wall of _fire_.

I was forced to stop, turning and getting my back literally against the wall as I scanned around for the _sick_ creature that had been the creator of... All of this.

It phased through a tree, one of its buttons actually hanging off, its zipper-mouth set like a frown.

The string keeping the eye attached started to pull itself back into the open 'flap' that held its eye on the things head, finally leaving it with its standard look as the ruby-colored button slotted into place in the flap of what I'd imagine is supposed to represent and eyelid.

I got a full view of it.

Dark grey skin like leather covered in even darker patches of grey, two 'eyes' made of buttons that gleamed with either malice or something that made them look like gemstones from afar.

Two long, grasping hands lay by its sides as it floated. Its legs and hands were the same grey as the rest of the small things body, but simple. It didn't look like it was meant to move- It was too 'fake' looking. If I'd ever seen a plastic doll start getting up and walking like a normal person, I'd imagine the creeping horror at the back of my mind would be the same.

The only other features on its grey body apart from its ruby-button eyes and rusty golden zipper would be the small, almost tail-like protrusion that came from its behind and drooped like a dead limb, its rusted golden color turning more brass than the mouth, another would be the three 'spikes' that extended from its head like a crown and the wispy piece of grey behind its head that swayed as if like a piece of cloth in the wind.

Its small, almost non-existent neck suddenly snapped as its head tilted at an angle that would have been impossible for something living, its frown turning into a grin.

Shaking, I brought the pistol from my side.

I was aiming as best as I could, the Ghost made no reaction.

The trigger was pulled and the barrel of the weapon spluttered, small globules of energy no bigger than a marble spitting out of its end and dissipating before even getting a meter out.

The counter on its side read '000'.

I put it away. I was calming slightly, the Banette seemed languid, staring lazily and watching.

I knew this wouldn't capture it, but I could distract it at least for a moment.

A single Pokeball of the trio in my bag was procured.

The thing laughed like a banshee, its cry of mirth sending a shiver down my spine.

" . . . . "

I said nothing, only prepared my throw.

And then it vanished. I just knew it wasn't the end now.

"Come out of hiding little Ghost, or are you too scared?"

No response. It probably didn't care, but if I could trick it to get outside...

A cold hand grasped against my neck.

I froze.

A voice whispered against my ear. Soft and cold. I can't describe how fucked it felt to listen to... _It_.

"You can do nothing." It softly muttered directly into my ear, its mouth would have had to be next to it, but I saw nothing.

Its grip tightened in response to me trying to turn.

I knew the fire had vanished- Seemingly not worth it to the Ghost.

"I-"

I cut the thing off by shoving the ball into where I thought it might have been-

An inhumane growl- And then nothing.

I ran through the mouth of the forest, finally leaving it behind me, within moments I was running over a wooden bridge.

I could hear wretched screams of anger off in the distance that turned my skin pale- But I didn't care.

I wanted nothing to do with that _thing_.

Before I even knew it, I was half-collapsed, leaning against a bench under the rays of the sun.

It was still midday, the sun had barely gone much further down than when I'd last checked in the woods.

Barely any time had passed and yet it felt like so much had happened.

Sighing, I pulled myself up, letting myself sit on the bench so I could look through my small stach of supplies in the not-actual-leather bag while listening to the sounds of birds tweeting, the river a few metres to my left and the remnants of what I could hear from the forest that wasn't that far off to my right (it was mostly more tweeting and a few growls).

After checking what I had, I took a mental note of my supplies.

Supplies:

\- Two Potions

\- Two Pokeballs

\- One Shitty Laser Pistol With More Ammo Than I Remember (70.0 now for some reason)

\- One Laser Battery For The Shitty Pistol That Has Charge Again For Some Reason

\- Really Comfortable Leather Coat

\- A Camera With A Metric Fucktonne Of Space

\- And The Weird Maki/Coin I Don't Remember Picking Up

The last one was a surprise, I don't remember anything about that fucking coin, but it was still there. Right underneath my camera the golden thing had laid, its form shining almost innocently back at me.

Deciding not to question it, I'd left it there, properly packed up everything and set off for Eterna.

Time to see if they have a library or something. If I can get a foot hold here then I can do so basically anywhere else in the small list of worlds I'm apparently on a course for visiting.

Except the ones I don't know about and Worm... Wait a minute...

Well, having some good form of defence to stop me from dying immediately is better than nothing.

Let's see how Eterna treats me then.


	19. Chapter 17

The walk to Eterna City took, at most, a quarter of an hour to finally complete.

I remember the path vaguely -God it feels like millennia since I last saw that bridge in all of its pixel-y glory- that lead to Eterna (the city). A simple wooden bridge that had a lot of fishermen on it. When I'd walked on its path I'd found maybe three or four people, not exactly a great amount.

But once I had finally crossed that line between Route-whatever and Eterna, I took a look at the place. Three or four skyscrapers were scattered around clusters of other, rather new looking buildings that framed the grey roads- People of all shapes and sizes walking across the roads and the occasional car driving by. Rather charmingly, the sidewalks were put side by side with a layer of grass and flower-filled greens- giving the streets a more nature-like feel as very small Pokemon dashed through this emerald addition to the sidewalks, some even making their homes in the trees dotting the greenery-infused extra to a town that really didn't need it.

The greenery made all of the streets almost twice as wide as what you'd have expected from such a large, bustling city- But that wasn't what I was concentrating on.

It was a wonderful sight. The last proper looking city and/or town I'd seen since this had all started had been Brockton Bay- And that place was _hardly_ capable of being called a place in 'good condition'.

Eterna... Eterna City just had this _presence_ to it. Despite a few little stacks of smoke climbing steadily into the sky, though rare they were, the place had the distinct, earthy smell of nature- It looked new and organic in a way. It felt _less_ like a human settlement and more an extended limb of the wilderness outside- A curious meld between nature and industry.

If only home could have been anything like it, it has a sort of charm to it I cannot deny.

Taking a deep breath, I searched through what I could see from the opening gate of Eterna.

A cursory check of the buildings at 'ground level' led my eyes to the brightly colored, red building that was easily identified as a Pokemon centre. I noted that places location down for later.

Eventually, I realised I'd have to actually get moving if I wanted to see anything.

I began my trek through the nature/city/place with a nervous air surrounding me- This place, though pretty to look at and new, was intimidating. The buildings towered higher than any others I'd ever seen in person, Innerpeace not included (That place at least had a decent distance between each enormous building, here it was like a tin of sardines!). Each building felt... Well, I'm pretty sure this place isn't short on space for people, if they were I'd be rather surprised and be willing to call bullshit immediately.

But, to get back to what I was actually doing, I was walking down the streets, following signs to somewhere I knew existed and was at the heart of the city.

The statue, the one that was so ambiguous to look at you couldn't tell if it was meant to be Dialga or Palkia. Really, I just wanted to see it.

Now that I wasn't in danger, there was no immediate rush to get to safety and capture a Pokemon- And the day was still somewhat young. I didn't have to worry about time, I still had a good seven hours or so until midnight, so I should be fine for now.

A little sight seeing never hurt no one, after all.

[]

[ ]

[ ] Section Break

[ ]

[]

It took time, but I got there eventually.

The statue, it seems, was just as ambiguous as it had been to look at from above- Its pillar was made of marble or an equally white stone, the statue atop it formed from what I'm pretty sure is brass- Though I wouldn't quote myself on that, I'm no metallurgist and my knowledge of metals based on appearance extends only to 'shiny' and 'dull'.

Four, titanic limbs took up its base, the two at the back and one at the front making a triangle as they hit the ground, its one remaining forward-facing limb stretched out. From one angle it looked like a foot, from a slightly different one it looked like some weird fusion between the local gods of Time and Space was trying to do an impression of Iron Man and still looking intimidating in the process.

The neck was _another_ story all together. If you looked at it from the side you could see the face of Dialga- its head-like crest sticking out like a sore thumb.

If you looked at it from the front, it didn't look anything like Dialga and instead bore the likeness of Palkia.

Honestly, it was an incredibly impressive design, its complexity was not something to be laughed at- The only inconsistency was that both the forward facing gemstone and stone-ish bit of Dialga and the two 'shoulder gems' of Palkia were present, though to be honest in the form it took it looked even more intimidating.

Around the statue, green grass and flowers remained king. I watched for a while as two Starly, one a more darker color than the other, began to struggle over a scrap of bread left by some people for... Some reason.

Eventually, the oh-so _enthralling_ little brawl was brought to an end by the darker of the two ripping the bread from its opposites beak and flying off with it, causing the other to immediately follow suite.

"If I didn't know any better-"

I jumped, turning to the new voice in shock.

I wasn't expecting any talking.

"-You'd never seen a Starly before."

She was slightly shorter than me, though not by much, and wore a set of _very_ dark grey clothing (a leather jacket with pockets almost everywhere there could possibly be any: Or to be more literal, six. Two at the sides and four at her front that I could see) and an equally grey, rather small beret that lay atop her not-quite-raven-black hair, tilted to the side.

Age was something I could never gauge well with the people in the Pokemon world, even now- While her outward appearance made her look no older than a day over twenty, she was in fact, at that time days away from her twenty fifth birthday and would continue to look like that until she reached her forties.

Bullshit ageing man, those lucky fuckers don't even feel it.

Well, anyway, back to then:

Her eyes were a rather dull brown. She was rather... I believe the term is 'petite', but pretty. There's not much else I can say really.

Then again, pretty much everyone I meet in this place tends to look just better than people from anywhere else, so sights like her are probably pretty common.

A small little gremlin with stone-like skin and two diamond eyes chittered almost nervously as it scuttled around her legs, eventually being turned into a red miasma of energy as its trainer, the girl before me, returned it into its Pokeball (a Great Ball to be precise), then placing it onto the brown bandoleer that circled her body from her right shoulder to her hip. One red ball, two blue ones and another red one in that order were attached to it as she clipped the Great Ball into the second slot of the six 'holders'.

She gave me a quick once over.

Blinking, her neutral expression deepened into a frown.

"You seem lost."

Oh lady, you don't even _know_ the half of it.

"You could say that." I lamely uttered under my breath, barely loud enough for her to hear.

Coughing to clear my throat, I found myself needing to ask a question. "Is there any reason in particular you're talking to me?"

"Dense."

What... What does she mean by that?

"Dense?"

"Yeah. You seem rather dense." She murmured, not even trying to be quiet. She obviously wanted me to hear what she'd said.

Oh. Well that's not very nice.

"Would you mind elaborating?"

For a moment, I didn't get a response. The two of use just stared at each other awkwardly.

And then the realisation hit me.

"Hey," I began, breaking the silence that had crept up on us.

"Hm?"

"You wouldn't happen to know if there's a library around here would you?"

All I got was a deadpan stare.

"Of course there's a library. Is that what you were looking for?"

Sighing, I brought a hand to the back of my neck sheepishly.

"You would be correct."

Jen, her name apparently, basically forced me back out of the park and in the direction of said library. Along the way we'd exchanged some small talk, nothing really that interesting happening.

When we got to the library, I gave her my thanks and went on in.

This city, it seems, has a higher priority for its library maintenance than Brockton Bay does (not exactly a hard score to beat), this I can tell from the lines upon lines of book-filled shelves that seemed to stretch on forever- Not a single one had _even a mote_ of dust on it.

Impressive to say the least.

After talking with the receptionist, a youthful blonde woman with a rather obvious obsession for books, I managed to get a card that gave me an hours worth of time to do some research on one of the computers they had (I counted how many, they had forty all in all, maybe a little over half of which were in use by a range of colorful characters).

Setting myself down on one of the seats (the oh-so envious 'spinny chairs'), I placed my bag down to my right and took out the camera.

I began typing away for the next three quarters of the hour, using the white-colored camera's immense image space to take pictures of a large variety of papers and topics I'd never have been able to remember on my own, things like; Pokemon specific to certain areas of Sinnoh, places I should never visit unless I wanted to get torn in two or burned alive by wild Ghosts/Crag-dwelling/Dangerous Pokemon and, most interestingly of all, a few pages on the many variations of certain species of Pokemon common to Sinnoh, like a specific breed of Buneary found closer to rocky mountains that has a darker coat color and turns into a Loppuny with some form of fluffy boxing gloves on evolution. They tended to be better at punching or kicking, but aren't actually a Fighting type and were basically 'hunted' to extinction in the wild a long time ago by locals who wanted good competitive fighters. They're basically a protected breed now.

Other examples of some variations to Pokemon found in certain areas are the, I shit you not, 'King Aggron', or as some call them, 'Kaiser Aggron'.

I couldn't make this shit up. The 'Kaiser' Aggron are bigger and stronger than their steel-plated, rock-skinned cousins and incredibly rare- In fact, one of the oldest known living Pokemon is a colossal one that's predicted to have lived for maybe something over three thousand years, if not then close enough for it to not even matter.

The Aggron in question was last measured to be something along the tune of two hundred and seven feet _high_. They named the bastard 'Kaiser' when they first discovered him based on some old writings in nearby caves from a presumed human civilisation of mountain-roamers who _prayed_ to and _worshipped_ the bloody thing.

One ongoing theory is that 'Kaiser' Aggron, much like the one originally found in a large cavern located somewhere around Mt. Coronet are just Aggron that have eaten enough Iron to just be completely made of the stuff- Which is somewhat supported by the fact that most fossils of the precursors to Aggron and a large group of Rock/Steel types (Shieldon apparently are the ancient precursor to Aron/Lairon. This makes a surprising amount of sense) can be found with a higher amount of iron content inside them as they got bigger.

As for 'Kaiser' (that still makes me laugh) himself, he's basically an ancient fossil that goes around beating up other Aggron who refuse to, and I'm quoting the source here, 'pay tribute in metal' to him once a month.

This is the moment I decided _'I want an Aggron.'_ and found out where I'd need to go to get one in its most basic form- An Aron.

I spent the next ten-ish minutes wrapping up what I was doing on the computer and getting a few last minute checks in before finally seeing if this world had anything similar to the phenomena most know today as 'memes'.

I was _not_ disappointed in those five minutes of searching I had left before the computer had to be abandoned.

Placing my bag back on my back, I left the library once more.

I was met with the crushing realisation that I had no idea what the fuck I would do now, I had no Pokemon so I doubted I could take any room and board from the local centre, and I also wasn't rolling in any bills or whatever currency they used here.

This in mind, I took a brief look at my options- Left or right- and chose right.

In that moment, I held no idea on what the future could hold- But that brought with it an almost exciting feeling.

I felt almost ready for whatever lied ahead.


	20. Chapter 18

Walking through the (still amazing looking, but cold) small forest/streets of Eterna City, I found that the dawn was approaching much quicker than I would have liked.

Today, I would likely be sleeping in the forest again. I wasn't exactly _too annoyed_ by this, I'd somewhat grown used to the idea that most of my time here in this particular world until I managed to get a Pokemon would probably be spent outside in the wilderness- I had no job to get money from, neither the means to actually acquire one.

It was sad, but it was reality. It was the reality I had to embrace, even if I didn't like it.

The only place I really have to call a 'safe haven', come to think of it, is Maki's.

A slight pang of homesickness hit me hard as I trailed around the road, walking under the shade of a tree as I turned the corner, being met by the visage of the end of town- the place I'd come in from earlier today- and the warm, amber sky.

It was getting closer and closer to night. The thought was enough to pull a yawn from me and make my eyes water, though from something else entirely.

Night in another place, sleep in the wild once again. Another night in the unforgiving wilds of Sinnoh- even if I had a nice coat to help keep me warm.

Another day cursing my ineptitude, my incapability to save a friend.

Another day.

Sounds like fun, right?

[]

[ ]

[ ] Section Break

[ ]

[]

I hissed through clenched teeth as my foot slammed almost it's entire length into a rock, sending a sudden bolt of pain up my leg as I tore it from it's place on the rock and held it in two hands, jumping on one leg like a demented spring.

Thankfully, I hadn't broken anything and the pain was less that of something being 'wrong' with my body and more the sudden impact.

If I had broken my leg like that I think I might just end myself, the wildlife (read as: God-fucking-hates-you-worse-than-he-does-Australia Insects, Satan Ghosts, Shitty Mc Shitters of the avian or four-legged variety, or maybe even some random Dark type) would do it for me otherwise.

And I'm pretty sure that appearing in the next... world.

Oh God I have to go back _there_ again eventually, don't I?

Slowly with a sigh, I put down my foot, testing it in an attempt to bring... well, _them_ , off of my mind.

The pink/white girl and the man with the hat and the cane...

I'd kill them if I could, I know it. I'd be willing to end a human life.

And that scared me. It scared me more than the thought of them hurting anyone else I brought with me- the fact that they had impacted me enough with their actions to warrant me wanting to kill them was...

Well, I'm not a violent person, not really. _Mouthy on occasion_ , maybe, but not violent.

 _And yet I went right up to those Galleons and fucking fired away without any regards to personal safety like a berserker, I was willing to shoot those men in the ally to protect someone, a kid mind you, but I was still willing to fucking fire away and snuff them out like a fucking candle._

That wasn't me. Jack Southwark wasn't a killer.

And yet... I hated them enough to earnestly believe I could do it.

With a sudden, cold shiver running up my spine, I settled down beneath the shade of a tree, listening to the sounds of the night- cricket chirping in the air combined with melodious song sung from what I'd guess to be Cricketot or Cricketune that lived around the area.

' _It sounds so much like hers, their song._ '

My mind was silent as I listened in silence, before finally getting the motivation to leave once more.

' _I'm burning daylight._ '

With that final thought, I pulled off my leather coat and bag, undoing the zipper of my weird-leather coat and draping it over myself as I leaned against both the tree and my bag as a pillow.

Muffling my sniffling with a wipe of a hand and sleeve, I let myself sleep.

My dreams were filled with faces, hundreds of them- unrecognisable, but all saying the same thing.

"Failure. Violent. Idiotic. _You killed her_." On loop from a thousand shapeless faces. All of them containing some features that seemed familiar in one moment that shifted away into nothing the next.

[]

[ ]

[ ] Section Break

[ ]

[]

Opening a dreary and drowsy eye, I let out an explosive sigh as the sound of bird song made it's way to me- signalling for me to awaken.

I did so reluctantly, shuffling under my coat and slowly pushing my arms into it's sleeves like a snail putting on a shell- slow and sluggishly. The bag next to my head came right after, being pulled onto my back over the leather coat (after the coat was put on properly, of course) as a yawn escaped me once again.

Rubbing my eyes, I slowly began to wake up and began the trek through the forest once more to my end goal.

The mountain in the distance that towered over all the others around it.

I was taking an indirect route to Mt. Coronet.

I _was_ going to catch me a Geodude or similar, even if it literally killed me.

I _was_ going to get there or die trying.

My plan was simple: get a sturdy-ish Pokemon from deeper into the wildernes, in this case, the mountains, and begin to train the poor bastard on the weaker foes near the city, then slowly move out to stronger areas later.

Part of me noted that I should keep an eye out for berries or fruits- and I did so, eager to not go hungry during my travel through the lush, though surprisingly fruit-barren forest.

By the time the surrounding area had turned from the mottled green of forest to the grey of rocks and boulders with the occasional patch of grass, I'd managed to collect six small Oran berries (probably not properly matured, but something was better than nothing), one of which I ate immediately, enjoying it's strange mixture of flavours while the others were put into my bag for safe(er) keeping.

I checked them off on my mental list that I was barely able to remember the full extent of, then continued to search through the rock for one that fit the following criteria:

1) Wasn't smooth.

2) Was rounded to an extent.

And 3), reacted negatively to being poked, or even reacted at all come to think of it.

For a while, I remained unsuccessful, the method having failed me for the purpose of finding a Geodude amongst the rocks as I made my trek, getting closer to the actual mountain until I was actually walking somewhere around it's base.

What it _did_ do, however, was lead me further and further up the cliff.

I was ever so slowly scaling it as I searched.

It had taken surprisingly little time to get here- the afternoon had long since approached, but the sky had only now started to properly dim as the sun reached it's final moments of bathing this half of the rotating planet in it's life, descending ever so slowly down the horizon.

And here I was, nowhere near finding a Geodude (as far as I could tell, sneaky fucking rocks) and far off from civilisation.

I'd stopped my search at the top of a patch of rocks near a cave, basically maybe a quarter of a quarter _of a quarter_ of the way up.

And this wasn't even one of the larger mountains in this particular cluster- in fact, it was probably one of the shorter ones.

The cave had been where I'd decided to 'set up camp' for the night and sleep. Tomorrow I'd continue my search, and if I continued to come up with nothing, I'd go on until I ran out of food and off myself.

Sure, the next world in my little 'circuit' seemed eerily similar to what I imagine a deathworld more deathworld-y than this one would be like- Hm. I can't imagine those walls around that city were just for show, they were there to keep something out, the problem is I don't know what that something is.

If it was enough to push back _humanity_ , one species for infamous for fucking over everything that fucked with it, itself included, and one with the clearly advanced technology I'd seen as well as the supernatural powers exhibited by the people there, then I wasn't sure I even wanted to _look_ at whatever the fuck it was that had caused them to get 'locked in'.

If it could do that to humans with honest to God _superpowers_ , I doubted a low level Pokemon would be able to help me much, if at all. A strong one could _probably_ keep whatever it/they were at bay for a while if it had to.

But that's probably wishful thinking.

I guess it depends on what exactly this 'thing' is. Hell, for all I know it's humanity fighting humanity into a corner and they don't even have nuclear power- fuck, it might just be a purely _magitech_ world were none of it would really even _count_ as technology or science as the people back home would know it.

There's just not enough information- that seems to be my biggest problem for that place.

It's the only world I can _confirm_ knowing absolutely _jack shit_ about.

The other world might be alien to me as well, but it might also be a place I know. I need to know more before making that judgement.

When I go there I'll have to dedicate my time to learning- though _how_ I'll do that is beyond me. I have the same problem there as I do here- to do anything I'd probably need an I.D, something I certainly don't have.

Bah, I'll deal with it when the time comes- for now I need to rest, get ready for tomorrow.

My method of doing so was almost exactly the same as the night before- set myself up against a surface (in this case, a cave wall) and place my head on my bag to sleep.

I buried myself under my coat, bag beneath me as the leather warded off some of the cold where it covered me.

Thankfully, my dreams this time were quickly forgotten and, along with them, my torture.

[]

[ ]

[ ] Section Break

[ ]

[]

Awakening in the relative safety of a rocky cavern left me feeling somewhat... incomplete.

I felt like I was missing something- nothing too important, just...

There was a slight feeling of dread in me- nothing overpowering, but reminiscent of a countdown or timer.

Something in me was tense, counting down something.

It was a gut feeling, something in my stomach, something that caused me to become tense in preparation for something- and it didn't seem like it'd be a _good_ thing.

When I came to a conclusion, I wasn't sure if I believed it.

My thoughts could come to a single conclusion- ' _you're going to die soon. Fall over and just stop._ '

A hand pressed against my chest as my heart beated within it.

' _Ba bum. Ba bum. ba ba bum_ '

My hand was wrenched from my chest at the uneaven beat- panic began to set in.

' _What is happening?_ 'I mentally cursed, feeling out my heart once more.

Two beats as they should be to my knowledge, then a third that was offbeat.

My panic just sort of... faded, replaced by a momentary delirium that eventually settled down to just a cold, unfeeling, logical mindset.

"So." I asked myself.

"This is how I die here then? Is this some weird way to keep me going?"

I wasn't an idiot, not fully.

Superpowers don't exist- not where I'm from.

My mind began to work in a calm manner- surprising.

Was I in shock?

Something had done this to me, had _forced_ me to start doing these jumps- it wouldn't make sense otherwise. There was no logical way _I_ could have made this happen- made myself world hop.

I couldn't start the hopping, something had done it for me.

Something had sent me rolling through some loop- something higher than me, and likely higher than anything in his or her 'sandbox'.

Common sense says that playing with something that can kill you is stupid. It just seems logical for this being to be higher than... well, _Arceus_ is probably the strongest thing I can even interact with, and he or she probably trumps that _goat fuck_ by a wide margin, otherwise he wouldn't have chosen this particular world for me, he'd have been tracked and killed for daring to interact with his 'territory' or whatever it would be called.

The only reason I can think of, for such a powerful being to have even bothered with this setup, is for it's own amusement.

I'm a fucking _god's plaything_ , and this was probably his way of keeping me travelling- it's actually rather genius if you think about it.

Give a man the power to live eternally by coming back after death in the way I do, and he'll eventually 'settle' in a single place and just stay there, be as 'comfortable' as possible.

So, to keep this person going, you give them a time limit. Give them a certain amount of time they're allowed to live in a place in total.

 _Give them a fucking heart attack to keep them moving._

I couldn't help laughing, it was almost depressing how hard it was to stop laughing at my own misfortune, at the tears in my eyes.

This thing... would it have given me such a limit, an early warning, for a permanent stop to my 'adventures'?

Was it worth the risk to find out?

'No.' I decided immediately.

I couldn't let it end here. I could change so much, help people, if I just tried.

But above all that, I know my main motivating factor would be killing _them_.

These thoughts in mind, I put on my leather coat- a gift from a friend still living.

I collected everything I had- my backpack and the like- where it was stored.

My weak little energy pistol was raised- put against my temple.

I couldn't take the chance.

The thing made a light sizzle that made me almost doubt that it was workin-

And then I died as superheated gas clashed with my head.


	21. Chapter 19

Falling from the air, I landed, not in a warehouse nor lavatory, but surrounded by green.

Thankfully, I fell onto my back from a relatively short distance, and on no stones or rocks.

My unique perspective gave me a good view of the sky above- and the broken, shattered moon, it's pieces still somehow kept close to it, despite the fact that they'd _probably_ be pulled into the earth's orbit.

An observation I quickly dropped in favour of checking my backpack was fine after the fall.

I cursed as I saw it- mush, a surplus of some blue mush with little bits of Oran skin in them- the outside of the berries having burst while inside my bag.

Two of the small, probably immature berries I had gathered had been turned to paste- though, somewhat thankfully, the potions I had put them behind had mostly stopped any of the surprisingly thick and viscous ooze from moving to the camera, which I took out from the bag as a just in case measure and so I could take a few pictures, or towards the Pokeballs on the other side of the bag (I should probably thank my mother's lessons on organisation for that), thus preventing any ruin to my 'potentially sensitive machinery' in the form of some blue goop getting into the circuitry or something.

...Which I believe I'd have to eat now.

Can't exactly let it go to waste, can I?

There was some little tufts of fluff and grime in the scooped-up goo- but those sections of corruption I just separated from the main, big, almost-but-not-quite dough mess that was the Oran mush.

It tasted exactly like it did as a berry, a mix of various flavours that seemed to change as I continued holding it in my mouth, just more like a particularly moist dough than a fruit.

Why? I don't know. I'm pretty sure fruit (or berries, but they're basically the same thing when it comes to Pokemon) aren't _meant_ to have the consistency of batter.

That, or Oran berries are just special. Or berries from the wonderfully weird world of Pokemon in general.

I ate what I could and dumped the rest on the ground, scraping the cyan residue on a nearby tree before going back and organising my stuff again, moving the Oran berries to another pocket on the side, then zipping it all back up and putting the bag back on my back, keeping out the camera to take a single, lone picture of the moon.

Even broken, it was _beautiful_ , even I, with my borderline blindness to beauty, had to admit that. The lack of humanities influence in these trees had left the sky plain- the clearest sky I'd ever seen. Not cloudless, but it was enough to see the face of the moon, marred and crippled, but 'alive' in a sense of the word.

Despite being shattered, the moon of this place had a certain, almost fantastical charm to it. Broken it was, sure, but despite that it remained strong.

Whatever had broken it was gone, perhaps had been for a while- the story was likely one that would be intriguing to hear. Even that great thing that had shattered it could not break it- the moon had continued on, and her pale beauty was still something that many would likely turn to for inspiration.

The moon, like I had been turned into, was a _survivor_.

The only difference was, that while I only lived because of some strange curse that I had no strength or power over, the moon was able to do so on it's own power.

A survivor by necessity, and a survivor because of something out of their control.

I smiled, a tear rolling down my cheek.

I wiped it away almost as quickly as it formed, making that tear vanish into nothing but a stain on my face.

This place... was barren. Not of life, there were _shit tonnes_ of trees and plants, but of civilisation.

Hell, the only way I knew of that could bring me closer to a village or town was from fire- and there was no smoke in the distance in any which way that I could have used to locate one.

I was lost in the middle of nowhere, and if my theory on something forcing those walls to be built was correct...

Well, I was in deep shit. _Very_ deep shit. I had a beautiful view, mind you, but the shit I was in might as well have been neck-deep for all the good that would do me.

Face set into a frown, I readied my energy pistol in my right hand, having filled it up with the only spare battery I had, and began the trek in a random direction. I didn't know at the time how to decipher any direction from another- but that was beyond the point.

Intent on finding safety, I went into the tree-filled jungle. I was somewhat calm, but not to such a large degree that I wasn't on my toes.

Everything sort of blended together as I walked- but after a while, I miraculously managed to find _something_.

At first, I had almost missed it, not managing to see the bloody thing until a long while after I'd almost gotten so far away as to have lost line of sight with it- but a lucky look into the gaps in the trees had left me curious as I sighted something grey.

What I'd found was stone bricks scattered about and a ruin that they likely had fallen off of. A semi-circular wall where I'm _pretty_ sure it's meant to be a fully circular one, going by the formation of the bricks themselves and the fact that what was still standing of the wall seemed to have collapsed in on itself even worse than a house of cards in a hurricane. The half of it still standing was overshadowed by a ring of stone that I could barely see with maybe three or four supporting pillars- though I couldn't be sure from this angle.

I was looking at it from an outside view, but was content to just observe it from where I was- on a hill.

It sure as hell wasn't newly made and knocked over- it was overgrown, cracks in the brickwork broken through by vines, moss hanging off of it, almost calm in it's solitude. It had all the signs of age I'd seen that one time I managed to visit Stonehenge.

When you look at something like that, a 'simple' structure that's long been weathered down by whatever nature's thrown at it, possibly more in this case, you can tell it was made by something with some measure of intelligence- a man-made structure just _looks_ different to a naturally forming thing in nature, like a mountain. Age affects the two differently, you can see it when you look for more than a few seconds at something.

This...

It was an _old_ structure, no doubt about that. I could see a few spiderwebs of cracks taking a grip on most of the bricks- and even if not that a few singular, large gaps in the bricks as if they'd been sliced. The ones most affected where the ones that had fallen to the ground, likely long ago, and never been picked back up.

It looked like it might have once been... maybe the base of a tower, like a rook chess piece or something?

No, there'd be more rubble if that was the case.

I frowned at the enigmatic structure, putting a hand to my chin.

My approach wasn't fast, it was at a rather casual walking pace, wary. I took a few steps towards the structure, manoeuvring around the discarded bricks that were likely more than thrice my age until eventually I stood in the middle of the ruin, marvelling at the alien architecture (or would it be more accurate to say 'I, the alien, marvelled at the local architecture'?).

The floor below me was solid stone- surprisingly well preserved with a few bits of moss here and there.

However, something I found most curious was the stone podiums standing untouched by age, almost as if they'd been placed here much, much more recently than everything else.

All in all, there were twenty of them. Each was... cold, almost as if it wasn't any different to the stone around it- ignoring the obvious age difference.

Perhaps people had come here more recently in history and placed the podiums here, or were using them for something?

That seemed more likely than anything else. It was either that, or the podiums had something that stopped them from decaying like everything else.

This world _did_ appear to have something supernatural about it, considering the people and the stuff I'd seen some of them do was outright _superhuman_ (which, considering Worm is on the list of places I happen to visit, becomes much easier to swallow). Magic could be a way to explain away the problem, but it also would be the easy way out, and the least hopeful one.

If it wasn't, in fact, a magical enchantment of some strange kind that was causing the podiums to stay as clean and new looking as they currently are, then that implied they were visited by someone, at least recently enough to do a check up on them.

...And yet that information _would still_ do nothing to help me, because I'd have no idea where to go even if someone had been around to make sure their 'special pillars' were intact, or had come to replace them.

For a moment, I entertained the idea of knocking one over, but eventually decided that that would be a bit too dickish and instead chose a rough direction, facing away from the half of the wall that was up, and began walking for... some amount of time.

I stumbled around for maybe a good hour and a half, maybe more, I wasn't exactly counting, and eventually found that I was getting tired.

So, in my _infinite wisdom_ , I decided that I'd do the same thing I'd done a few days ago now in another world and sleep against a tree with my bag on my lap.

I'm not sure if the fact that I can say 'I slept this way a dimension ago' is something I should be finding humour in, especially considering circumstances, but there wasn't really anything else on my mind when I was trying to go into the realms of sleep. Just laughter.

It was mostly empty laughter- a pathetic attempt at calming me so I might be able to sleep peacefully.

But... it was so _funny_.

I'd been killed... I don't even know how many times now- and yet, with such a power, you'd think I'd actually manage to impact _something_ in a way I wanted to or intended to.

Nope, got my second friend on my journey killed and might have fucked myself over in one of the only dimensions I can really imagine eventually calling 'safe' because I made assumptions about knowledge I wasn't actually entirely sure of.

I mean, what's not to laugh at, right? Tragedy is funny if you've got the right mindset for it- good old _gallows humour_ never hurt anyone, not at all.

 _I'm fucking cursed aren't I_?

Sleep was hard to attain, what with the occasional reawakening I got when I saw them again. A smiling demon in brown, white and pink, an umbrella in hand, twirling, closed, stabbed into something as the figure whispered violent nothings at me. No voice attached to her evil taunts and jeers.

Atop the umbrella's end, a green, glowing corpse that screamed in soundless agony, cursing me for my stupidity.

 _My fault. My fault. It's all my fault._

By her side, there was always someone in a white suit, grey handkerchief type thing around his neck. A black and red bowler, something orange- a cane.

Both laughed. It was there whenever I let my guard down, two demons laughing at my failure, telling me who was responsible for _her_ death.

I got there eventually, though by the time I managed to finally exhaust myself into a dreamless sleep, the sun was soon to rise- having tinted the horizon behind the trees orange with it's light.

Maybe two hours of proper sleep, probably less, was gained that morning.

Before I could make it anymore than that, the sun had risen far enough above the trees to stare directly at me- blinding in it's intensity.

I sucked it up, got to my feet, straightened my not-actually-leather coat and rubbed my tired eyes.

After that it was just the continuous grind of putting each foot in front of the other until I got somewhere.

[]

[ ]

[ ] Section Break

[ ]

[]

Tired, having walked for God knows how long, I eventually managed to find something- though it wasn't what I wanted. In fact, I wasn't sure whether to be incredibly displeased or impressed.

Just more ruins, though this time it isn't some shitty semi-circle of decaying stone, it's a weirdly designed set of towers and bridges over... what's probably an incredibly deadly drop, can't tell since they were built over a large fucking fog cloud or something.

Again, not sure whether to be impressed at the _balls of steel_ the architects of this shit must have had, or incredibly angry at the idiocy of the construction.

Why would you build a _fucking set of bridges_ like that over a bottomless chasm? Why _the fuck would you have a tower_ in the middle of those bridges, then build a turret above that tower, supporting it with only pillars instead of solid wall that could hold it better?

I think I had an aneurysm looking at it- I'm no architect, I was probably completely wrong since it was still standing, but the thing looked fragile.

The only part of it I could see working was the bridge- and even then only because it had a rather unnecessary amount of supports keeping it aloft and above the fog.

If nothing else, it had a good view of the mountains.

That had to account for something.

I was... _doubtful_ that this bridge would actually lead me anywhere safe- it was treacherous looking and I doubted anyone actually lived on the other side of it.

So, with this in mind, I was about to leave.

Then I thought better of it, taking off my backpack so I could snap a photo.

I took a single shot of the strange stone bridge and tower thing, then packed away the camera again and set off, taking one of the four excess Oran berries from my bag that hadn't been crushed so I could eat.

My plan was to go around the outskirts of the forest until I found something more beneficial for me than the ruins I'd passed.

I did so, beginning a journey around the outskirts of the cliffs I'd found myself near- and began to, in my groggy state, think.

Something you should _never_ really try doing when half awake.

To be honest, I was rather disappointed. I had been lead to believe (by myself, I'll admit) that something was keeping people behind walls, something dangerous-

Nothing. I hadn't heard or seen so much as a peep of anything that could be considered dangerous, even after sleeping (granted, not for very long) through some of the remaining day, waking up, and travelling around a bit.

The second thought that came to mind, after this realisation, was that it might have been a viral infection of a sort- but, if that was the case, I was fucked anyway and didn't really have to worry about it.

Then, I really thought about it and stopped.

Sleep-deprived as I was, there was some loss in my thought process- I was being a bit 'dumber' than usual, in essence.

But if the second assumption was right, if the thing that caused everyone to lock themselves away was something you could be infected by, I was likely a carrier.

A carrier that dies, and then comes back. _Forever_. In a new location every time.

The implications were not something wanted to think about- but I did.

Even after I rationalised it later, vague memories of _them_ , the demonic duo who had brought me so much harm when they had come to the outskirts of a wall near a forest- the way they had been cautious as they scaled the wall implied a _physical_ threat that no medication was going to help with, but even after rationalising it, a little bit of me felt like I was just trying to refuse to accept something that could easily be truth. I felt like I was lying to myself, like I had before when this mess had all began maybe a bit over a week ago from now, maybe less.

My mind and mouth were silent after that. I just focused on walking through the edge of the dawn-lit trees, expression and behaviour a little grim as my coat and backpack hung heavily on me- weighing me down.

I was tired and exhausted- I hadn't slept enough.

It was then, when I began to take off my bags, that I saw it.

Something, vague and black, a faint sight that was enough to draw my eye to a space between the trees, but not enough for me to actually see anything. Despite seeing nothing, my sleep-deprived form sobered up- I _knew_ I'd seen something in there.

I was right, I _had_ seen something.

I stayed stock still, watching the spot I'd just seen a flare of black through- then I saw _it_.

The thing was slouched over, like a hunchback, though it certainly didn't look human. Not even deformed- instead it looked like a wolf that had been dipped in tar-coloured paint and given the ability to stand. _Everything_ about the being seemed off, from it's bestial shuffling forwards like a drone, to the two red and amber eyes glowing ethereally like the souls of a reverent or angry spirit hanging where it's sockets should be, framed by a white material of some sort at the top of it's head.

It scanned forward with a roving, hate-filled gaze as it moved into the forest, sniffing at the air, rearing it's head up and panting with a tongue even blacker than it's fur hanging from it for a moment as it continued forth in it's bipedal stance.

It looked like _evil incarnate_.

I caught a glimpse, and then it vanished behind the trees from it's forward shuffling taking it out of my view, never for me to see again.

 _Because I was_ not _dealing with stuff like this shit again while I could live and breathe._

As quietly as I could, I pulled on my coat and tightened it, then strapped on my bag, and continued walking at a much faster pace than before- rushed partially by fear, partially by a desire to not lose my chance at revenge, as low as it was.

I wasn't tired anymore, at least.

At some point I went into a run, fear gripping me as I ran- each macabre shadow that twisted in my view to the right had me jerking my head to check for any signs of the thing or anything like it.

My left being a white abyss of which I could see no bottom to, was not somewhere I found myself looking often.

It was only when I almost fell over into the aforementioned abyss that I slowed myself and tried to calm my wits, stopping and sitting down.

My calm was easy to attain before long. I managed to reel in my thoughts, and think things through. What I was going to do now, that sort of thing.

Thankfully, it looks like today luck was smiling upon me, because before long I realised that I could see something in the distance- beyond some cliffs.

I saw a tower, a single, tall tower.

A sign of civilisation.

A tower, _a creation built by people_.

The thing itself was too far away for me to make too much out of it- but it was still standing, and there was a slight glow about it from the small section of it's top I could see. Something green.

It wasn't long before then that I got to my feet after my short rest and began another walk through the greenery of the forest I'd found myself in- though this time, with a purpose.

I didn't know it yet, but what I'd found was Beacon tower- a place that, in my future, would be both a blessing to me and a curse.

On one hand, it would be a safe haven, on the other...

It would become more like a prison.


End file.
